37 Days (TV series)

37 Days
Genre	Drama
Written by	Mark Hayhurst
Directed by	Justin Hardy
Theme music composer	Andrew Simon McAllister
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	3
Production
Producer(s)	Mark Hayhurst Lucy Bassnett-McGuire Susan Horth
Cinematography	Douglas Hartington
Editor(s)	Adam Green
Running time	177 minutes
Production company(s)	Hardy Pictures
Distributor	BBC Worldwide
Release
Original network	BBC Two BBC Two HD
Original release	6 March (2014-03-06) – 8 March 2014 (2014-03-08)
External links
Website

37 Days is a British documentary drama miniseries that was first broadcast on BBC Two from 6 to 8 March 2014. The three-part miniseries covers the weeks before World War I, from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 to the United Kingdom declaring war on Germany on 4 August 1914.

Cast

Cast of 37 Days — the senior members of the Cabinet.

• Ian McDiarmid as Edward Grey
• Nicholas Farrell as Eyre Crowe
• Tim Pigott-Smith as Herbert Henry Asquith
• Sinéad Cusack as Margot Asquith
• Bill Paterson as Lord Morley
• Kenneth Cranham as John Burns
• Ludger Pistor as Bethmann-Hollweg
• Rainer Sellien as Kaiser Wilhelm II
• Bernhard Schütz as Helmuth Moltke
• Mark Lewis Jones as David Lloyd George
• Nicholas Asbury as Winston Churchill
• Urs Remond as Prince Lichnowsky
• James McArdle as Alec
• André Kaczmarczyk as Jens
• Holger Kunkel as Falkenhayn
• Stephan Szasz as Jagow
• Kate Ambler as Muriel
• François-Éric Gendron as Paul Cambon
• Niall Cusack as Benckendorff
• George Lenz as Mensdorff
• Chris Reilly as Gavrilo Princip
• Oliver Ford Davies as Cunliffe
• Patrick Fitzsymons as King George V
• Ian Beattie as Tsar Nicholas II
• Simon Coury as Franz Ferdinand
• Rainer Reiners as Von Below
• Gordon Fulton as Sukhomlinov
• Mary Moulds as Sophie Chotek
• Christopher Leveaux as Lieutenant Feldmann

Production

The series was shot entirely in Northern Ireland. It is part of the BBC World War I centenary season and was first announced by Janice Hadlow, the controller of BBC Two, on 22 August 2013. The series was made to quash assumptions about the war’s inevitability, such as the Sarajevo shooting making the war inevitable.

Writer and producers Mark Hayhurst and Sue Horth compiled a 175-page book tracing "every conference, every telephone call, private letter and telegram swirling around Europe" before writing the script.

Episode list

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	UK viewers (millions)
1	"One Month in Summer"	Justin Hardy	Mark Hayhurst	6 March 2014 (2014-03-06)	2.89
2	"One Week in July"	Justin Hardy	Mark Hayhurst	7 March 2014 (2014-03-07)	2.14
3	"One Long Weekend"	Justin Hardy	Mark Hayhurst	8 March 2014 (2014-03-08)	1.84

External links

• 37 Days at BBC Programmes
• 37 Days at IMDb
• 37 Days at Radio Times