Dewsbury Town Hall is to star in a new drama called Spanish Flu - The Forgotten Fallen.
Wednesday 5th August @ 9pm on BBC4
Over the past few months the Town Halls management team have been working closely with Screen Yorkshire and Hardy Pictures to secure this filming at Dewsbury Town Hall.
The whole building was used for a ten day period and was overrun with more than 70 cast and crew!
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Spanish Flu – The Forgotten Fallen is a new drama illuminating one doctor's pioneering efforts to protect the people of Manchester from the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, starring Bill Paterson (Little Dorrit and Criminal Justice), Mark Gatiss (League Of Gentlemen and Doctor Who), Charlotte Riley (The Take and Wuthering Heights) and Kenneth Cranham (Rome and The Lavender List).
Set against the background of the Armistice in November 1918, as millions of exhausted soldiers return home from the Great War, the film tells the little known story of Dr James Niven (Bill Paterson), Manchester's Medical Officer of Health for 30 years, and his heroic efforts to combat a second wave of fatal influenza as it spreads across the city of Manchester and the UK.
Dr Niven has built his career protecting the welfare of Manchester's most vulnerable people, from the factory workers to the slum dwellers. But, just as Manchester's fighting heroes are returning home and crowds of men, women and children gather to celebrate the end of the Great War, Niven realises that it will take all of his energy and expertise to limit the spread of this mysterious infection.
Facing resistance from both the city and his fellow medical officials, Dr Niven, statistician Ernest Dunks (Mark Gatiss) and their secretary Peggy Lytton (Charlotte Riley) struggle to understand the evolving virus; to communicate the urgent need for action to the establishment and the media; and to pull together scarce resources to alleviate its impact on the poorest in society.
And as they battle against complacency, inertia and red tape, the gravity of the unfolding crisis hits home when Peggy's family start to succumb to the virus.
Inspired by Dr Niven's own accounts and documented facts, the film pays a rare tribute to the estimated 70 million forgotten fallen who died from Spanish influenza across the world.
Dr Niven's heroism continues to resonate today with many of his conclusions, instructions and discoveries echoed by modern advice and procedures for pandemic flu.
