THE BRITISH INVASION

EVERYONE WE SPEAK TO HAS A different nickname for it. The giant Ferrero Rocher (male lead Rafe Spall). The great Scotch egg (co-star Eleanor Tomlinson). A Chocolate Orange (the director). A painted Zorb ball (the producer). Our take? An enormous mouldy tangerine.

April 2018. SFX is at Ainsdale Nature Reserve, Merseyside, which is doubling for Horsell Common, near Woking, for a new three-part take on HG Wells’s Martian invasion classic The War Of The Worlds. Behind us a scar of devastation – blackened vegetation; scorched, snapped-off tree trunks – stretches a good hundred feet. (Don’t worry, ecologicallyconscious readers: the production took advantage of some regular felling). Before us sits the alien object whose arrival caused it: a dirt-encrusted sphere maybe 15 feet in circumference, poking out of the ground. Spades and wheelbarrows suggest it’s been dug out, while trestle tables laden with scientific instruments and bottles of ginger beer attest that it’s become the object of great curiosity.

Stepping past IKEA bags full of Edwardian coats and hats, we