37 Days: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

Covering the final weeks before the outbreak of war, 37 Days follows the rapidly changing crisis through the eyes of the principal players, during a hot summer, from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, to the declaration of war between Britain and Germany on 4 August.

The drama serial will overturn orthodox assumptions about the war's inevitability. Such a disaster did not happen by chance, and nor was it a foregone conclusion. It took considerable effort and terrific ingenuity, as well as staggering bad luck, to destroy a system that had kept the general peace in Europe for the 99 years that followed the Battle of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon.

Writer Mark Hayhurst comes fresh from the success of Hitler on Trial for BBC Two, which starred Ed Stoppard and Ian Hart. He has previously written award-winning docu-dramas for major broadcasters, such as Robespierre and the French Revolution, Last Days of the Raj and The Somme and the Year London Blew Up.

Series details

• Title: 37 Days
• Format: Scripted
• Language: English
• Genres: Drama, War, History
• Premiere date: 2014-03-06
• Final broadcast date listed: 2014-03-08
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Network listed by TVmaze: BBC Two
• Network country: United Kingdom
• Typical episode runtime: 60 minutes
• TVmaze community rating: 7.2/10
• TVMaze ID: 1638

Cast and credited roles

• Ian McDiarmid — Sir Edward Grey
• Tim Pigott-Smith — Herbert Henry Asquith
• Nicholas Asbury — Winston Churchill
• Mark Lewis Jones — David Lloyd George
• Bill Paterson — Lord Morley
• Kenneth Cranham — John Burns
• Ludger Pistor — Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
• Urs Remond — Prince Karl Max Furst von Lichnowsky
• Sinéad Cusack — Margot Asquith
• Rainer Sellien — Kaiser Wilhelm II

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 2014-03-06; final listed air date 2014-03-08; episode order: 3.

Source and licence

Adapted from 37 Days on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.