Physical sets were built in the foreground, with the backgrounds added later in CG, similar to the movie 300.

Airing next month, the one-off drama tells the story of the greatest natural disaster to shake the ancient world, the destruction of the island of Thera around 1620 BC. Many experts now believe that this volcanic eruption and its catastrophic impact on Europe’s first great civilisation, the Minoans, inspired the legend of Atlantis.