Britain's Greatest Codebreaker

Furnace teamed up with Story Center Productions to make a new film for Channel 4 about the life and legacy of mathematical genius and code-breaker Alan Turing. His work cracking the Enigma code at Bletchley Park is credited with shortening the Second World War by two years. Turing laid the foundations of the computer age and conceived the notion of artificial intelligence. He envisaged a future in which machines might one day think. In short he was one of the greatest scientists that Britain has ever produced. But he was also unashamedly homosexual at a time when it was illegal, and instead of being celebrated and feted by the State, in 1952 he was convicted of gross indecency and punished by being chemically castrated. Two years later he was dead at the age of 41. This big, bold film portrays Turing as he really was, a maverick genius and inspiring figure who lived life on his own terms. It will show that modern technology has only just begun to explore the potential of his ideas, and that the 21st Century will be his century. It places him firmly where he belongs in the scientific firmament, alongside the greats like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. This drama-documentary stars Ed Stoppard as Alan Turing and Henry Goodman as his psychiatrist, Dr Franz Greenbaum.