From the opening shot of SS-GB, it is clear this is a world that is both familiar but also arrestingly alien. There are the rolling hills of the South Downs, the dome of St Paul’s and opulent columns of Buckingham Palace – with a difference: they are all emblazoned with swastikas.

The series is the newest ambitious, big-budget drama from the BBC. Based on the bestselling novel by Len Deighton, SS-GB envisions a world in 1941 in which the Nazis won the Battle of Britain and took full control of the UK. It is, according to the creators, “the ultimate post-truth drama – what could be more fitting for this moment in time?”

The show, which begins on 19 February, is also the BBC’s latest attempt to maintain its hold over crucial Sunday night ratings. It follows on from a successful run of dramas, beginning the year with Sherlock, which at its peak drew in 8.1 million viewers on New Year’s Day, and then the critically lauded thriller Apple Tree Yard, starring Emily Watson, which drew in 7 million for its first episode on 22 January.

For the show’s producers Sally Woodward Gentle and Lee Morris, adapting Deighton’s book has been decades in the making. Woodward Gentle met Deighton, considered alongside John le Carré and Ian Fleming to be among the great British spy thriller authors, 20 years ago and the pair remained friends.

“Len actually suggested it as a good one to adapt, but he wanted it to be done by the right people – other people had tried before and failed,” she said. “It’s too nuanced and complicated to do as a film so it made sense for it to be done as television, but it’s only recently that television has been ambitious enough to take on something like that.”

Det Supt Douglas Archer, played by Sam Riley. Photograph: Sid Gentle Films

Like the BBC’s previous global drama success, The Night Manager, it has attracted high-calibre talent. The central character of Det Supt Douglas Archer, who grapples with having the Nazis as his bosses while also being embroiled in the resistance, is played by Sam Riley, who starred in films such as Control and On the Road, while Kate Bosworth plays the American reporter who becomes his love interest.

The script has been written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who co-wrote six James Bond films including Skyfall. Deighton, now 87, read the final script before production began but made no changes.

While it is a drama firmly set in the past, Morris and Woodward Gentle said they could never have anticipated how many of the themes it touches on, and the climate of fear it evokes, would become so relevant to the world today.

“In this post-truth, selfish, populist, moment SS-GB raises important questions,” said Woodward Gentle. “We see people scared and vulnerable, they feel under attack, they are torn because people they loved and they thought they knew, aren’t doing what they consider to be the right thing. People who they thought they could trust have affiliations elsewhere. People are driven by self-interest. So in that sense the show feels topical.”

Morris agreed. “It now feels like we have entered into some kind of dystopian parallel universe,” he said, adding with a laugh: “So who would have developed this show apart from people with great foresight?”

Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth, who plays an American reporter, at the world premiere of SS-GB on 30 January. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The appetite for drama around the world means the BBC can afford to give creators such as Woodward Gentle and Morris a larger budget, as profits from selling the show through BBC Worldwide have soared. The pair also said that while SS-GB was “very different”, they would happily build on the success of The Night Manager, which recently won three Golden Globes.

For Morris, the draw of SS-GB comes from the watertight plotting of Deighton’s book but also the moral questions the setting of Nazi-occupied Britain inevitably raises in the minds of those watching.

“We all like to think we would resist but history tells us that not everybody does,” he said. “When you look at the central character Archer, and the compromised position that he’s in, you inevitably ask yourself what would you do, what would we all do? Would we all be in the resistance or would we have to be pragmatic? That’s all part of the brilliance.”

While the story is concluded over five episodes, the writers have left it possible for it to continue if there is an appetite for more.



“The series is left quite open-ended enough that we can do a second series if we need to,” said Woodward Gentle. “We’d love to take it on again.”

• This article was amended on 13 February 2017. Apple Tree Yard starred Emily Watson, not Samantha Morton as an earlier version said.