Oxford actor Hugh Laurie is in a new Netflix drama about the Second World War.
All The Light We Cannot See is a four-part drama based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Doerr.
The novel revolves around the characters Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who takes refuge in her uncle's house in Saint-Malo after France is invaded by Nazi Germany, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German boy who is accepted into a military school because of his skills in radio technology.
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Shawn Levy has directed the drama for Netflix with Mr Laurie playing Marie-Laure's uncle Etienne.
Mr Levy said: "My central message to fans of the book - and I’m screaming this from the top of the mountain here - is, ‘I’m as big a fan as you'.
Mr Doerr said: "To watch finished, polished scenes is mind-blowing. To see an auteur’s vivid dream of something I built with sentences and paragraphs is an astonishing gift.
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"The series is absolutely gorgeous to look at — from the opening, with all the leaflets falling from the sky, to the montage of Marie-Laure’s father building her a scale model of Saint-Malo. It repeatedly took my breath away.”
Mr Laurie was brought up in the city as his father Dr Ran Laurie was a GP in Blackbird Leys.
He was born in Oxford in 1959 and was educated at Dragon School in North Oxford between the ages of seven and 13, before going to Eton College and then Cambridge University.
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Mr Fry and Mr Laurie’s stage success led to their TV sketch show Alfresco, which also featured the likes of their friend and Laurie’s one-time partner Emma Thompson, Ben Elton and Robbie Coltrane.
His comedy prowess was further bolstered by his role in Blackadder as the amiable idiot George in the third and fourth series of the hit sitcom in the late 1980s.
On the big screen, Mr Laurie has appeared in films such as Peter’s Friends, Maybe Baby, Sense And Sensibility, 101 Dalmatians, The Man In The Iron Mask, The Borrowers and Stuart Little.
His portrayal of the unconventional and anti-social Dr Gregory House won him a host of top industry prizes, including Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild awards and People’s Choice awards, as well as a handful of Emmy nominations.
Mr Laurie was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama in 2017.
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