From the battlefield to the courtroom
BBC
Anthony Boyle as Brian Wood in Danny Boy
Toby Jones and the creators of the Iraq war drama Danny Boy reveal their approach to making the BBC Two film at an RTS event
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n 2009, soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment found themselves the subject of a major inquiry into allegations of torture and the murder of Iraqi prisoners. The inquiry lasted five gruelling years and eventually concluded that the allegations were untrue and “deliberate and calculated lies”. A decade after the story made headlines, the highstakes investigation and the wider theme of morality in war is being dramatised in BBC Two’s Danny Boy
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through the eyes of one of the soldiers involved in the case, Brian Wood. “When you’re bringing real, complex events to an audience, the most effective way in is through a singular perspective,” said executive producer Sue Horth, who was also behind the Bafta- winning dramatisation of Damilola Taylor’s story, Damilola, Our Beloved Boy. Indeed, it was the storytelling technique that made Chernobyl so compelling, and brought home the message about systemic racism in the US in When They See Us. Wood made an ideal conduit into
the war and ensuing inquiry because his experience touched on key themes. “Imagine being a soldier who’s feted for their heroism, who is awarded a medal, and is then effectively accused of being a war criminal,” explained Horth. “How does that feel? At the same time, what are those split-second decisions taken in combat that are then scrutinised with the full glare of legal expertise after the event? “The third component was that Brian comes from a family with a 300-years heritage of military service. So [having] that intimate family experience to
