Jenny's War (1985)

Jenny’s War is a 1985 war television serial set during World War II, made by HTV in association with Columbia Pictures. It is directed by and written by Steve Gethers. The screenplay is based on the novel with the same name of Jack Stoneley. In the UK it was shown as four 50 minute episodes on the ITV network, while in the United States it was syndicated under the Operation Prime Time banner by MCA TV.

The serial stars Dyan Cannon, Nigel Hawthorne, Robert Hardy Christopher Cazenove and Hugh Grant, and is about a mother, Jenny Baines, who searches for her son Peter, who was shot down over Germany, and who she believes is still alive.

The concentration camp site scenes were shot in the grounds of Thoresby Hall in the Nottingham countryside during the National Union of Miners strike. In the film the prison camp was known as Stalag Luft 4B but in reality it was a group of disused billet huts in some woods at Thoresby Hall, which was then owned by the Coal Board and which has now been turned into a day spa.

A short mini-series made for TV, Jenny’s War was first screened on ITV and subsequently released on VHS.