1. Episode 1

The students face SOE’s demanding selection process. Known as the Student Assessment Board, this intense four-day course puts the students through a series of physical and mental tests, all with the aim of finding out who has the raw talent required to progress to full training. The programme charts the beginning of SOE, which started with a handful of agents, in an organisation determined to find a way back into Nazi-controlled Europe.

2. Episode 2

Training begins as the students are schooled in guns, explosives and silent killing techniques. Skills which came together and helped SOE to pull off one of the most audacious assassinations of World War Two. The students need to show a calm head and a killer instinct when handling real weapons, but not everyone makes the grade.

4. Episode 4

The students are transported to a British Stately home - this is SOE Finishing School - a 1940s spy school which prepared agents for a life living undercover in enemy territory. They learn to pick locks, send coded messages and see some real SOE gadgets, before facing an intense mock interrogation designed to prepare agents for the eventuality of capture, torture and possible execution.

5. Episode 5

Eight of the original 14 students have fallen by the wayside, leaving just six survivors to undertake SOE’s final scheme – a 24-hour practice mission bringing together all the skills they have learned during training.