Look out for Downpatrick railway as back for WWI TV drama

Look out for Downpatrick railway as back for WWI TV drama

11 September 2013

DOWNPATRICK Railway Museum is the back for part of a new BBC2 drama, The Wipers Times.

Starring Ben Chaplin and Emilia Fox, it broadcasts tonight at 9pm.

A tearful farewell scene is recorded at the museum as Chaplin’s character, Captain Fred Roberts, heads off to the front in this World War 1 period drama.

The Wipers Times, a one-off 90-minute drama, is based on a true story and aimed as a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit amidst overwhelming adversity.

Set in the bombed-out ruins of Ypres in 1916, the drama tells the tale of Captain Fred Roberts and Lieutenant Jack Pearson, who discover a printing press and

see it as a perfect opportunity to take

the men’s minds off “the attentions of Messrs Hun and Co” by creating a satirical newspaper to raise the spirits of the soldiers.

They call it The Wipers Times, as that is how the soldiers pronounced ‘Ypres’.

The paper’s jokes, pastiches and spoofs, which Roberts and his sub-editor Lieutenant Pearson write, prove hugely popular with soldiers — though not entirely with their superior officers, who see the paper as an act of insubordination and subversion. They call for the paper to be banned, but the paper continues to print for another two years, in which time the original press is blown up by shellfire and the regiment is moved around the battlefields of Flanders.

The writers’ comic intervention provides an extraordinary antidote to the horror and the mayhem around them. And the poetry which floods into the paper gives a poignant expression to the deep feelings of loss.

Roberts and Pearson are decorated for bravery and suddenly the War is over. Roberts goes on to pursue his dream of working for a newspaper, but can he succeed?

This latest TV appearance is the one of a number of film productions that have used the local heritage railway line as a location, which has hosted stars such as Griff Rhys Jones, outgoing Doctor Who star Matt Smith, Graham Norton and Michael Portillo.