Well Josh, thanks for hosting this discussion. You raise an interesting point about the layers of myth that built up around the regime. I am sure that there were examples of opponents of the regime over-egging tales of horror to get the attention of the rest of the world, and often stories of brutality were embellished in the re-telling.

But what complicates matters is that this reputation for brutality was one that Saddam used to his own ends. His regime was, as Kanan Makiya has pointed out, founded on fear, and fear can only be sustained if it is grounded in some sort of truth. So yes, there clearly were examples of the most extreme and perverse brutality. I have talked to people who witnessed them first hand. But these examples have then fed a rumour mill. It makes it very difficult without some sort of monumental truth and reconciliation type process to sort the myth from the reality.

So how did we address this challenge in writing the series?

Let me focus on our portrayal of Saddam's eldest son, Uday, by way of example.

Lurid stories of Uday's extreme cruelty abound. I am sure, having met people who knew him, that many of them are based in fact.

It would have been superficially attractive to present a catalogue of his worst excesses, but ultimately this would have proved banal, if not downright repellent to an audience. Instead we chose to focus on firstly how Uday's behaviour was a product of his relationship with his father, and than how that behaviour changed the nature of their relationship.

When still young it is clear that Saddam was grooming his eldest son to be his successor, however Uday's uncontrolled violence meant that even Saddam was forced to acknowledge that he may not be best suited to the role of national leader. However Saddam found other ways in which Uday could involved in government and useful to him. In effect he became Saddam's attack dog. The threat of Uday becoming involved in any enterprise of political situation was enough to pull anyone into line. Saddam even used the threat of Uday against his own half brothers, who were getting a little too independent for his liking.

Stories of Uday's perversity and violent excesses were plentiful, but by using this framework of his changing relationship to his father we focused on the examples of his behaviour that caused things to change. Once we had this focus we could excavate the particular instances to make sure we were representing something that had been a reality rather than purely myth.

The violence we see from Uday in the films is extreme, but it is meaningful for the charcaters, rather than an accumulation of lurid tales.