By Owen Gibson, media correspondent
25 January 2008
The Guardian

The BBC is planning a controversial dramatisation of the run-up to the war in Iraq, to be broadcast over 10 days in March, ahead of the fifth anniversary of the start of the conflict.

Starring Kenneth Branagh as Colonel Tim Collins, as well as Art Malik and Harriet Walter, the high profile series will focus on the events that happened on the corresponding days five years earlier, the BBC said yesterday.

The series, overseen by Colin Barr, who made an acclaimed drama-documentary about Robert Maxwell, will tell the story of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, the debates in the UN, the plans for reconstruction and the countdown to the war, which began on the night of March 20 2003.