Pretending to be in a hot desert while filming in November in Watford was the hardest challenge of producing BBC Iraq War drama Danny Boy, the star of the show has revealed.

Danny Boy is a gritty 90-minute film based on real life events and features lead actor Anthony Boyle taking on the role of Iraq War veteran Brian Wood, a soldier wrongly accused of historic war crimes.

The show, which premiered on BB2 on Wednesday night, was shot in Watford, instead of Iraq, due to the travel restrictions enforced from the pandemic.

Anthony Boyle, who plays Sgt Wood, told the Sun: "We couldn’t travel abroad due to Covid, so the battlefield in Iraq is actually a ditch in Watford.

"We filmed in November, so pretending I was in a hot desert when I was actually freezing was challenging.

"In fact I think it’s some of the best acting I’ve ever done!"

Watford Borough Council was keen to make its own claim to fame, tweeting some of the scenes filmed at Watford Town Hall.

The show is now available on BBC iPlayer.

The real-life Sgt Wood was a lance corporal in the 1st Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment at the Battle of Danny Boy in May 2004.

The battle sparked a 13-year legal fight after British troops were given an order to remove the bodies of 20 Iraqis who had died and take them back to a nearby camp along with nine prisoners of war.

The detainees, who were insurgents with the Shia militia Mahdi Army, went on to claim they had been mistreated and heard the torture and murder of their compatriots.

A soldier once bestowed a Military Cross for bravery by the Queen, Wood later found himself falsely accused of war crimes and was summoned to testify to the Al-Sweady Inquiry – one of Britain’s biggest ever public inquiries, into allegations of mistreatment of the Iraqi nationals by British soldiers.