A set of new promotional photos have been released for BBC Two’s upcoming factual drama Castles In The Sky.

The one-off film tells the previously untold story of the fight to invent radar by Robert Watson-Watt (Eddie Izzard) and a team of unproven and unknown British scientists.

Castles in the Sky airs at 9pm on Thursday 4 September on BBC Two.

The cast also includes Laura Fraser (Breaking Bad) as Margaret Watson-Watt, Watt’s long suffering wife, alongside Alex Jennings (The Queen) as Henry Tizard; Tim McInnerny (The Devil’s Whore) as Winston Churchill; David Hayman (Trial And Retribution) as Frederick Lindemann; Julian Rhind-Tutt (Green Wing) as Albert Percival Rowe and Karl Davies (Game Of Thrones) as Skip Wilkins.

Eddie Izzard commented: “I feel very privileged to be playing the role of Robert Watson-Watt. Hopefully our production will allow him, along with Skip Wilkins and the 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 added: “The time is right for a contemporary approach to this rich and under reported vein of British history – its 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 resonates today.”

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