D-Day, 6 June, 1944. We all know the date. But it could so easily have been 5 June. And if it had been, history as we know it might have been very different.

Directed by Australian Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai), Pressure inducts its audience into the backroom history of D-Day and Operation Overlord to spotlight the importance of a frequently overlooked consideration in war-making: the weather.

Andrew Scott plays the real-life Group Captain James Stagg, the Scottish meteorologist assigned to predict the weather over Normandy in early June. In 1944, there is no forecasting as we know it. Instead, predictions are usually based on previously observed patterns – which, we learn, are very much in the eye of the beholder.

The American side of the operation, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower (played here by Brendan Fraser in something of a swerve from type), is primed to go and has a thumbs-up from his own hand-picked weather-monitoring team, led by Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina). Hundreds of thousands of men are waiting in makeshift camps throughout southern England and everything, logically speaking, is in place for...