World on Fire (TV series)

Plot

Cast

Main

• Sean Bean as Douglas Bennett, a bus conductor, pacifist and shell-shocked veteran of the Battle of the Somme, and father to Lois and Tom.
• Julia Brown as Lois Bennett, a 21-year-old factory worker and talented singer who later joins the Entertainments National Service Association.
• Yrsa Daley-Ward as Connie Knight, a close friend, colleague and musical partner of Lois.
• Arthur Darvill as Wing Commander Vernon Hunter, an RAF fighter pilot.
• Blake Harrison as Sergeant Stan Raddings, Harry's platoon sergeant.
• Jonah Hauer-King as Harry Chase, an interpreter at the British embassy in Warsaw who is later commissioned into the British Army, and joins the SOE.
• Helen Hunt as Nancy Campbell, an American journalist struggling to broadcast the truth from Berlin.
• Patrick Kennedy as Campbell.
• Lesley Manville as Robina Chase, Harry's wealthy and emotionally repressed mother.
• Ewan Mitchell as Tom Bennett, Lois's older brother, a petty criminal who later joins the Royal Navy.
• Parker Sawyers as Albert Fallou, a Parisian jazz saxophonist and Webster's lover.
• Brian J. Smith as Webster O'Connor, a gay American doctor based in Paris and Nancy's nephew.
• Zofia Wichłacz as Kasia Tomaszeski, a waitress from Warsaw, with whose family Harry lodges, who later joins the Polish Resistance.
• Charlie Creed-Miles as David Walker, Harry's superior at the Warsaw embassy.
• Tomasz Kot as Stefan Tomaszeski, a veteran of World War I and father of Kasia, Jan and Grzegorz who rejoins the Polish army.
• Agata Kulesza as Maria Tomaszeski, Stefan's wife and mother of Kasia, Grzegorz and Jan.
• Victoria Mayer as Claudia Rossler, a German mother living in Berlin, struggling to contain the secret of her daughter's epilepsy.
• Max Riemelt as Schmidt, Nancy's Nazi censor and minder in Berlin.
• Mateusz Więcławek as Grzegorz Tomaszeski, Kasia's sickly younger brother who joins the Polish army with his father.
• Johannes Zeiler as Uwe Rossler, Claudia's husband who runs a textile firm.

  Supporting

• Bruno Alexander as Klaus Rossler, Claudia and Uwe's son, a German soldier.
• Matthew Aubrey as Private Taffy Morgan, a member of Harry's platoon.
• Eryk Biedunkiewicz as Jan Tomaszeski, Kasia's youngest brother, a schoolboy.
• Jack Deam as Ted, manager of Lois and Connie's ENSA unit.
• Eugénie Derouand as Henriette Guilbert, a nurse at Webster's hospital in Paris, secretly Jewish.
• Helene Grass as Frau Pessler, one of Uwe's employees, a committed Nazi.
• Ansu Kabia as Eddie Knight, Connie's husband, a jazz trumpeter.
• Jonathan McGuiness as Sir Oswald Mosley
• Ceallach Spellman as Private Joe Broughton, a member of Harry's platoon.
• Borys Szyc as Konrad, a Polish army soldier.
• Benedict Taylor as Dr Drake, head of a mental hospital in Manchester.
• Buom Tihngang as Demba, a Senegalese soldier who Harry meets in France.
• Benjamin Wainwright as Randy O'Connor, an American fighter pilot in Vernon's squadron, Web's brother.
• Tomasz Ziętek as Tomasz, a colleague of Kasia in the resistance.
• Dora Zygouri as Hilda Rossler, Claudia and Uwe's daughter, who has epilepsy.

  Episodes

Series 1 (2019)

Series 2

Kasia and Lois will meet, and the fallout from that, I think for everybody, will be interesting and fascinating. Season 2 will start, historically, with the blitz in the Northwest of England. And North Africa will be very much the field of battle. We’ll find out more about Webster’s family history. Nancy will finally have to leave Berlin near the start of the series, for crossing a line, and we will also find out more about Nancy. And she will carry on. She will definitely be in the Soviet Union for some of it.... And Lois, of course, trapped in a rather Brontë-esque, loveless marriage with Vernon.

Production

Ratings

Critical reception