To be broadcast on BBC 2 on 4 September 2014
Castles in the Sky
Factual drama about the fight to invent Radar
by Scotsman Robert Watson Watt (Eddie Izzard) and a team of unproven and
unknown British scientists.
Watson Watt’s ambition was initially dismissed by the Oxbridge-dominated establishment including Winston Churchill as “Castles in the Sky” while he and his fellow scientists, who were his meteorologist colleagues, were disregarded as a bunch of “weather men” from provincial universities. Yet they continued to strive to achieve their dreams against all odds, to the detriment of their personal lives and at the cost of some of their marriages.
Izzard comments: "I feel very privileged to be playing the role of Robert Watson Watt. Hopefully our production will allow him, along with Skip Wilkins and their team to finally take their places in the pantheon of British greats of World War Two, as the inventors of Radar. Without Radar the Nazis would probably have been able to invade and occupy our country. So the future of the free world may well have been saved by these unlikely men and their brilliant work leading up to the Battle of Britain. Their names are not famous - that is a mistake Britain must rectify. This is their story.”
Producer Simon Wheeler explains why he decided to put the film together: “The time is right for a contemporary approach to this rich and under-reported vein of British history – it's not like other war stories - if anything it’s more akin to a combination of The Social Network and Chariots Of Fire than The Dambusters or Reach For The Skies.
It’s an important story about a bunch of men who realised that their seemingly crackpot ideas and incredibly hard work could save the nation – and its poignancy and meaning still resonate today.”
