Emmerich set his creative team the considerable task of bringing back to life London as it would have looked more than four centuries ago, a city built around the River Thames – itself alive with boats and dockside activity - teeming with people and animals who crowded into markets and inns.

The production was based at BerlinÂ’s famous Studio Babelsberg where some key sets, including the theatre in the round, where the Shakespearean plays were first performed, and the alleyways and cobbled streets surrounding it, were built on sound stages and the back lot.

But the vast majority of the stunning vistas of Elizabethan London were created in the computer.