The British Invasion

HG WELLS’S ALIEN INVASION CLASSIC THE WAR OF THE WORLDS IS COMING TO OUR SCREENS AGAIN, AND THIS TIME IT HASN’T BEEN TRANSPLANTED TO THE MODERN DAY USA. WE VISITED THE SET

- Ian Berriman

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, ecologically-conscious 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 perch on a blackened log as 70-odd supporting artists in period clobber – moustachioed bobbies with wooden truncheons, women holding their long dresses up to protect them from the mud – are led in. It’s the hottest day of the year so far – not, as one passing extra grumbles, the best time to be wearing four layers of tweed...

We observe a short scene being shot. The crowd looks on as a man moves forward, holding a handkerchief to his face, and gingerly places his palm on the pod, soil having dropped off it in parts to reveal a smooth black sphere beneath. When he lifts his hand off, it’s covered in something viscous and black.