Where was World on Fire filmed?

The World War Two drama is returning to screens after a four-year absence.

By Thomas Ling

Published: Thursday, 20 July 2023 at 12:00 am

World on Fire fans, assemble: the globe-trotting war drama has finally returned to our screens after a four year break.

With an epic cast of characters including Jonah Hauer-King, Lesley Manville, Blake Harrison and more, World on Fire follows the intertwined lives of various individuals caught up in World War II, tracking their journeys from England to Germany to France.

Season 2 delves deep into occupied France and Nazi Germany as well as widening its scope beyond Europe, transporting viewers to the sands of the North African desert.

World on Fire writer and creator Peter Bowker previously explained that the North Africa scenes will show soldiers from the British Empire fighting for the Allies “in a desert that had been carved up in the previous century by European powers”.

This means that alongside telling the stories of British soldiers, these sequences also focus on the stories of Indian fighters and Italian enemies as they find themselves in an inhospitable, utterly unknown landscape.

Bowker continued: “In Europe we dramatise the deteriorating situation in occupied France as the Nazi occupation hardens and resistance becomes increasingly dangerous. And in Germany we tell a story of how a warped and toxic nationalism can induce ‘ordinary people’ to bend their morality to breaking point.

“Back in England in late 1940, the war had come home in the form of soldiers returning from Europe, refugees fleeing warfare and persecution, and bombs being dropped by the Luftwaffe as the attacks on London extended to the great industrial conurbations including Manchester and Liverpool.

“It is in Manchester that we begin to tell the story of the murkier world of espionage as the Home Office sent some of its Whitehall men north, to set up crude spy networks amongst refugees to investigate potential sabotage and keep an eye on morale in industrial towns and cities that they didn’t entirely trust or understand.”

But where exactly was the series shot? Read on for everything you need to know about where World on Fire was filmed.

Where was World on Fire season 2 filmed?

"David
Gregg Sulkin as David in World on Fire.
BBC/Mammoth Screen

The second season of the BBC series started filming in Northern Ireland, but we don’t currently know where else it was filmed and where specifically was used.

However, we do know more about the filming locations for the first series, which was filmed in two main locations: Manchester and Prague.

As you probably suspected, many of the scenes set in Manchester were actually filmed in the city. However, as Adam Smith, director of the series’ first two episodes, told RadioTimes.com, parts of Wigan also doubled for the city.

What about the scenes set in Poland, Berlin and Paris circa 1939? All of these were filmed in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Well, almost all. “We also pretended parts of Manchester were Warsaw,” Smith told us. “And parts of Wigan were Paris. It was a really confusing shoot!”

Scenes of war-torn Warsaw were also filmed in Prague. “We found this amazing location just outside the site, this devastated factory,” explained Helen Ziegler, executive producer. “It looked like it had been bombed [it had actually been half-demolished] and it had this eerie beauty to it.”

Smith added: “Obviously there’s a lot of CGI in the show, but we tried to use as many real things as possible and augment, rather than create, so it felt truthful and realistic.”

Later in the first season, you might also have recognised the beaches of Blackpool masquerading as the shores of Dunkirk. Specifically, the staging of the famous evacuation, which takes place in episode 5, was filmed on St Anne’s Beach, close to the town’s airport.