Heroes’ journey
As season two of SAS Rogue Heroes shifts from North Africa to mainland Europe during the Second World War, director Stephen Woolfenden and producer Stephen Smallwood discuss making the six new episodes and reveal how they recreated the 1943 invasion of Sicily.
When producer Stephen Smallwood picked up the scripts for the second season of SAS Rogue Heroes, one scene elicited a particularly strong reaction.
Reading the section in question – a dramatisation of the Allied invasion of Sicily during the Second World War, featuring troop-filled ships sailing at night and gliders crashing around them – Smallwood recalls thinking: “My God, how the fuck am I going to do that?”
Smallwood had already overcome challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and filming in baking temperatures in Morocco during production on season one, which is largely set in North Africa. Now, with the setting for season two switching to mainland Europe, the 1943 invasion of Sicily takes centre stage in episode one as the SAS spearheads the assault – and series creator and writer Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) wanted every aspect to be shown on screen.
Smallwood turned to director Stephen Woolfenden (Outlander, Strike Back) to help him realise the dramatic sequence. “Anything to do with water and boats is very tricky in the filmmaking world, but Stephen is a very experienced director,” Smallwood tells DQ. “He looked at it and said, ‘Yes, I know how to do this.’”
Originally inspired by Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name, the series strikes an untraditional, contemporary tone as it charts the formation of the British Army’s unconventional and Special Air Service, better known as the SAS.
Launching on BBC One and as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on January 1, season two opens in spring 1943 as Paddy Mayne (played by Jack O’Connell) takes control of the SAS following David Stirling (Connor Swindells)’s capture. But GHQ has cast doubt over the future of the regiment, while the creation of a second unit and an influx of new arrivals make things even more difficult for the men. Can they prove that the SAS remains essential to the war, wherever it may lead them?
Produced by Kudos in coproduction with MGM+ in the US and distributed by Banijay Rights, the show’s returning cast also includes Dominic West and Sofia Boutella, while new recruits include Gwilym Lee, Con O’Neill, Mark Rowley, Jack Barton, Paolo De Vita, Anna Manuelli, Edward Bennett and Matteo Franco.
Woolfenden picked up the directing reins from season one’s Tom Shankland. But while the story continues, the new setting in S2 meant Woolfenden wasn’t tied to a pre-established directing style or approach.
“Season two has the gift of a wonderful cast of characters from season one, but the theatre of war is so much different,” he explains. “They have to liberate the civilian population whilst pushing back a German and Italian force, and they have to deal with the consequences of what liberation means. That brings trauma, understanding, joy and casualties, and there’s a traumatic event in episode four which is historic in terms of the history of the SAS. We centre the middle part of the series around it, and it affects them deeply for the rest of the series.”
Woolfenden admits it was “a big worry” that season two wouldn’t feature the desert, which was a character in itself during the first run. But filming in Croatia, which doubled for Italy, he echoed Shankland’s ambition to use the camera to deliver action and emotional stories that “go for the heart.”
Notably, Woolfenden developed his own technique called the “pressure point lens” that sought to highlight the characters’ intense emotions. “I put a camera just above the eyeline, but very close to [the actors],” he says. “It’s a wide and close lens with a very sharp drop-off into the depth of field, and it just feels like you can get inside their heads a little bit. This is a technique you’ll see me use on numerous characters throughout the series, and that’s just trying to say they’re under pressure here.
“It works beautifully well with some stuff that Jack O’Connell was doing and Theo Barklem-Biggs [as Reg Seekings], and it just puts a little bit of pressure on them. You can feel their brain twitching a little bit and you can hopefully understand the pressure they’re under.”
“As a producer who’s working across both seasons, I don’t expect the director of the second season to shoot it the same as the director of the first season,” Smallwood notes. “He’s got different circumstances to shoot, and the continuity, if you like, between the two seasons comes in the form of the characters and the writing.
“We did continue the continuity of it in terms of using contemporary music, or music from the 20th century. That’s a house style and that appeals very much to a younger audience. But in terms of directorial style, I never ask directors to try to shoot like somebody else. You want them to bring their own particular skills and view to the piece, and Stephen brought his skills and style to the piece and it’s worked well.”
While the actors were all put through their paces during production, shooting all six episodes offered Woolfenden his own “exercise in preparation, stamina and effort.” “But it’s a gift,” he says. “There are very rare occasions where a director gets all six, and it really does allow you to put a stamp on it and to be as personal as you can about it.
“We were shooting out of sequence from day one and, for me, one person being the master of ceremonies and being the conductor of this huge orchestra is a benefit for everybody. As a director, it was such an attractive proposition.”
“We try to do the entire series with the same director for many reasons, one of which is that if you’re shooting in two countries, it’s very difficult on a practical basis to split into blocks,” Smallwood says. “You do have to have all six scripts written up front, which is rare in British episodic drama. But Steven Knight writes at such a pace that he manages to do it.
“If you’re preparing across two countries, it’s a big ask on a director. He’s got to carry six scripts in his head, every single detail, every single line of every scene of six hours of drama, and that’s a big ask. It’s a big intellectual and intelligence challenge for any director and any team of people working on it. I find myself very tested by it, but Mr Woolfenden seems to carry it off.”
The production spent eight weeks in Croatia to capture scenes set in wartime Italy, taking in in towns, villages, clifftops and some old squares along the Istrian Peninsula, which hosted some “pretty big street battles,” says Woolfenden. The director also utilised major pyrotechnics and machine guns using blank cartridges to help accentuate the actors’ performances.
“With our cast, when you suddenly give them a machine gun that is firing 25 rounds every two seconds and ask them to say dialogue, it completely affects performance in such an amazing way,” he says. “We did some incredible things in close combat with our military advisor, with our actors, taking out German positions in Italy, which were deeply affecting in terms of their performances and feeling like everything’s live and real.”
On one occasion, the production landed in the same town square seen in 1970s war comedy Kelly’s Heroes, bringing with them a German tank, guns and flamethrowers.
“We had two of the best days of the shoot there. It was amazing, and within all of that action, you’ve suddenly got very detailed, emotional character journeys,” Woolfenden says. “It was a great company to work in and we felt the cast knew that they were doing good things. When the cast know that, it just propels you to do more good things.”
A key moment in episode one is the Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, which took place in July 1943, with the SAS repurposed to lead the assault. In the show, as their boats push forward towards the coast, the SAS men must continue ahead amid pleas and anguished cries for help from airmen stranded in the water after numerous planes from a separate attack went down. Under fire from an unseen enemy, they then storm the beach and make their way up the cliffs.
Woolfenden leaned on video testimony from some of the real people involved to ensure the water sequence was as authentic as possible. He also wanted to film on real water, and scouted locations including Dorney Lake near Windsor. However, he determined they needed more control than could be attained filming in open conditions.
That led them to Warner Bros’ Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire, which is home to one of the largest outdoor water tanks in Europe. At the time, HBO’s House of the Dragon had reserved the facility during filming of its own second season – but when they released their booking, the Rogue Heroes team headed straight there.
The production then constructed its own landing craft – at a cost of about £120,000 (US$150,000) – that was fully motorised and capable of carrying 22 people at a time. The sequence also utilised blue-screen visual effects and pieces of gliders that had been built to float in the water, while a special camera called a Hydrascope was used in the water to show moments where the boat was passing by the drowning men.
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“We shot over two-and-a-half nights at Leavesden Studios, and spent the first two nights doing all the stuff of people in the water, being with those people and making sure our actors who were in the landing craft could see what they would be seeing and reacting to,” Woolfenden says. “Then we played the scene in the landing craft on the last night, with actors in the water shouting out lines to get the attention of our actors. It’s a haunting sequence and a very emotional sequence.
“It was two-and-a-half night shoots at the end of a summer, and they were about days 75, 76 and 77 of an 81-day shoot when we’d already invaded in Italy. So we were right at the end of our energy levels. But we have the playgrounds to do all of that. We have the studios. We have the sets to do all of that in the UK, and it was a great sequence.”
Despite all the bombast on the show, from the action sequences to the music, the importance of the characters’ emotions remained steadfast throughout to ensure viewers can invest in the characters they are watching. For this, Woolfenden says SAS Rogue Heroes owes “a great debt” to Knight for creating a story where every action and experience has a consequence for those on screen.
Smallwood adds: “It’s a show that has real emotional depth, which comes from the writing and the actors, who have really done great work. I have to say, I think they’ve really matured from season one into showing something that’s really quite significant. Although it’s entertainment, it has real deep emotional heart and consequence, which I think the audience will really get.”
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