C5, Barcroft ready Pearl Harbor doc

The show will feature interviews with survivors including Frank Emond

ViacomCBS-owned Channel 5 in the UK and Ireland has commissioned a docuseries about the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Attack on Pearl Harbor: Minute by Minute is being coproduced by the channel and factual prodco Barcroft Studios. It will combine expert interviews with archive and underwater shipwreck footage to piece together the timeline surrounding the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian naval base, which sparked the USs’s formal entry into the Second World War.

Future-owned Barcroft Studios will retain the rights to the show for the US and Canada, with free-to-air network C5 set to broadcast a 3×60’ version of the series in the UK and Ireland.

C5 factual commissioning editor Guy Davies said: “Pearl Harbor is one of the greatest stories of the Second World War and to piece it together minute by minute is a gripping narrative. With the likely last ever interviews from both the US and Japanese forces involved on the ground, this is a powerful testament to those involved. It’s a brilliant historical box set treat for C5 viewers.”

Peter Wyles, Barcroft Studios’ director of programmes, added: “As the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor approaches, our films will take the closest look at the event yet. We have an incredible cast of characters, including some of the oldest World War II contributors ever to be filmed. And we have the perfect partners with C5.”