D-Day: As It Happens

TX: TBC

A 24-hour event in which Channel 4 tells the story of this pivotal moment in 20th century history by playing it out in real time across TV, mobile devices, the web and social media.  Between 9pm and 5 June and 9pm on 6 June (the period during which these events took place in 1944), we follow the fortunes of ten of the original participants in D-Day through a series of moment-by-moment updates using archive film, photographs, radio reports, diaries, letters and official records, with primary source material released at the very moment it depicts. 

This innovative project draws on unpublished research by Colin Henderson, a British historian who has spent the last 15 years meticulously analysing the archive material on D-Day to identify individual soldiers. There will be two hour-long programmes at the beginning and end of the event, updates throughout the day, a website , tweets, other alerts and social media tools to provide live updates on the action.  This will be the first history television programme to apply the information revolution of the present to the past, delivering a fresh sense of immediacy, stripping away layers of hindsight to reveal the raw, emotional experience as those involved lived it.

Prod co: Windfall Fims