SAS Rogue Heroes might have a host of major stars including Unbroken’s Jack O’Connell, Sex Education actor Connor Swindells and Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen telling the story about the group of soldiers going on a mission against all odds, but is the show based on a true story?
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In short, yes! The series is indeed a dramatised account of the SAS during World War II, and was inspired by "fearless, maverick soldiers" for whom the show is a tribute to.
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It draws heavily from SAS Rogue Heroes by historian Ben Macintyre, and the synopsis reads: "Filmed on location in the UK and Morocco, SAS Rogue Heroes is the dramatised account of how the world’s greatest Special Forces unit, the SAS, was formed under extraordinary circumstances in the darkest days of World War Two." Sign us up!
Speaking about real-life events behind the show, creator Steven Knight - who also penned Peaky Blinders, told the BBC: It has been a privilege to work on a project which tells the story of a renegade band of soldiers who used wit and imagination as much as firepower to halt the march of Fascism across North Africa during the darkest days of World War Two.
Connor Swindell stars
"This is a war story like no other, told in a way that is at once inspired by the facts and true to the spirit of this legendary brigade of misfits and adventurers."
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The show has changed some plot points though - particularly ones that actually happened, but seemed too unbelievable! Speaking at the British Film Institute, Steven explained: "It's never been written down, it came as a consequence [of meeting] Mike Sadler who is the last surviving member of the original SAS. He's now 102, he was 99 when I met him. And he told me the story that he and Stirling were in a bar in Paris and somebody said, 'you can't use this table we're using it all night', and the hand grenade they threw was a real hand grenade.
The new show was filmed in Morocco
"To make it seem realistic I turned it into a dummy hand grenade. They literally had to leave and run because they were beyond reason."
He added: "Such an amazing, unbelievable, incredible story, we all think we know who [the SAS] are, but when I started to research the Ben Macintyre book... what gets me is how young they were – 19, 20, 22, 23-years-old – boys, as far as I'm concerned, in this incredible pressure cooker situation. They changed the course of the battle."
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