Yesterday watching Gentleman Jack I noticed that the room used for the solicitor’s office was one I had visited, nay actually worked in. I recognised the painting on the wall and ejaculated loudly “That’s Oakwell Hall” as indeed it was.
My place of work was used in Love, Lies and Records (admittedly before I started there). It had been used in Frost previously (and other Yorkshire programmes).
The off license in Muswell Hill was used in Paul Whitehouse’s Happiness. ( I visit regularly as my GLW is from there)
Are there places (though some have changed, some forever, not for better) that you’ve recognised from films or TV standing in for somewhere else where you say Bloody hell look that’s dot dot dot?
Television Film locations I (or anyone else) have stumbled across.
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A fair bit, but then I work in central London as a (not very) civil servant so I’ve been in and out of a few government buildings. There’s a bit in ‘The Ipcress File’ where Harry Palmer uses the side entrance to the Old Admiralty Building on The Mall. I used to be in an out of there quite a lot.
I’ve recently found myself having to visit yet another department based off Lambeth Bridge, so I have to walk along the same bit of pavement where Ian Carmichael fell over Janette Scott in ‘School for Scoundrels’ – and – where John Gregson and Dinah Sheridan broke down in the final race in ‘Genevieve’
Plus, Mrs Beezer used to work in Maidenhead Town Hall. The main entrance of which made do as the hospital entrance in Carry On Doctor. The bit where Barbara Windsor sashays up the drive.
When we were still living down in Mill Hill, north London, we went to watch Hot Fuzz at the pictures. In the film there’s a chase through a garden centre. Although the film is set in the west country we both instantly recognised that they were running through Finchley Nurseries in Mill Hill. It made us happier than it necessarily should have done.
Actually, Finchley Nurseries is behind the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, which was used as Arkham Asylum in Batman Begins. To think, with me a big Batman fan, as I slept they were filming the new Batman movie a few hundred yards away. I wish I’d known.
Furthermore, across the road, more or less, from the Institute of Medical Research there’s the Adam and Eve pub, which was where they filmed all the pub scenes for BBC’s Silks.
Now we’ve moved to Penistone all we had round here was Jeremy Clarkson and his cronies filming on the showground, just do they could take the piss out of the name.
Also Hot Fuzz, I grew up in Wells, and nearly fell of my chair to see it being the main location used. The alleyways we used to run down as kids, the graveyard where we snuck a bottle of wine, but no opener (smashed the neck off on a gravestone, and then were too afraid to drink because of shards), the hills and woods we’d explored every inch of.m Bishop’s Palace (my friends and I once scaled the walls and run across the Bishop’s front lawn). Best of all in the pub scenes, I recognized a few of the background extras – all friends of my dad! As I now live some 4000 miles West, it made me rather nostalgic.
Edgar Wright went to Wells Blue School, and would have been a couple of years below me. I hope I didn’t flush his head down a toilet or anything.
Me again. I often have to work onsite doing civil servant stuff up at the Met Police College at Hendon. Much of the opening scenes of Hot Fuzz were filmed there, but most of the site has been been knocked down and sold off. Including, to the chagrin of all, the famous skid pan.
And, also, in other Simon Pegg news, as chance would have it, some friends of ours lived on the same estate in Highgate where the girlfriend break up scenes in ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ were filmed. They lived in the block seen behind Simon Pegg as he attempted to climb in the window of his girlfriend’s flat
Much of “Shaun Of The Dead” was filmed at the bottom of our road in Crouch End.
I thought a new pizza shop was opening, but it was set dressing for the film.
I was asked to hold back from going round the corner, one Sunday morning, when off to buy the paper, so I didn’t walk into a scene they were shooting.
That happened to me and my wife one our honeymoon in New York. We were told we either had to wait or we could walk across the road if we promised not to stare and point and just walk normally. As I was six months post spinal cord surgery I wasn’t walking normally anyway, so we decided to wait. They were filming a scene for a Pink Panther movie with Steve Martin, Jean Reno and Beyonce, so at least we got a couple of interesting snaps for when we were boring everybody’s socks off with our holiday photos!
Sounds like you and I used to live on the same street, Carl. James McAvoy and Ann Marie Duff were a few doors up, too,
It seems very much like it.
They sold to choirmeister Gareth Malone, who has since moved on, making the road once again a celebrity free zone.
Though I think Ann Marie Duff was staying here with friends earlier this year. I saw her a few time prior to lockdown.
Not so much a television filming location as a Word magazine shoot location.
A few years after I moved on from a London job, there was a work reunion planned for a Saturday evening. The venue was a pub in Shoreditch called The Water Poet.
On the afternoon of the get-together, I was at a loose end at home with a few minutes before I had to leave the house, trying to kill time by playing my guitar. I’d run out of inspiration and couldn’t decide what to play – so I let The Word mag decide for me. I picked up the back issue I was reading at the time, flicked through it and stopped on a random page. I was going to see if I could play a song by whatever artist was on that page.
The plan failed, as I landed on an interview with Rick Wakeman and there’s no way I can play a song by him. But the picture caption caught my eye: he was at the Water Poet in Shoreditch.
Suggs’s sleeve notes to Madness’s “The Liberty of Norton Folgate” album mention the Water Poet, too.
At the end of the ’80s I worked on a long-term refurbishment job of blocks of flats in Page Street, on the Grosvenor Estate in Pimlico.
It must have been just before we were there that the location was used for scenes in the film “Buster”, starring Phil Collins, Julie Walters and Larry Lamb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Street
Oxhey Park, on the southern edge of Watford by the big railway arches, bisected by the River Colne, is where Dirty Den Watts got shot in Eastenders.
I remember the railway arches. They’re at the bottom of Pinner Road where I lived as a kid in the 70s.
Another place I’ve remembered.
1-3 Middle Row W10, off Kensal Road near the top end of Ladbroke Grove. We were doing some work on a couple of old mews cottages in the late ’80s, next door to what was then a marble supplier’s yard, The Kensington Marble Company. The owner of the marble yard proudly informed us it was previously the location for Steptoe and Son’s yard.
The cottages are still there but the marble yard has since been demolished and replaced by a nondescript office block.
The outside of the house where I lived in Bristol (Clifton) was used in Shoestring. It was supposed to be his home.
Ah yes, and when he got to the end of the road and turned left, he was in Bedminster, as if by magic.
Where in Clifton? I used to live by the baths (which seem to be something called “Lido” now), and The Victoria pub. I did get yelled at by none other than Tony Robinson when attempting to leave my office in Park Place while they filmed a scene in an alleyway outside. I think it was a pilot where he played a detective. Also, avoiding Casualty shoots was a regular occurrence.
Royal York Crescent. No. 10 to be exact.
I used to live in Cliftonwood Crescent near ‘The Lion’ pub- another regular location.
Baldrick used to drink in there too. I lived in Bellevue Crescent when I first moved to Brizzle, and The Lion was effectively my local, there or the Eldon.
I used to live in Rodney Place (1974 – 1978), then Redland for a bit – happy days. Clifton was just starting to get gentrified but was still mostly a student and bohemian place – record shops, great pubs, artists, jewellers etc. I shared a flat with a jazz musician – I developed an aversion to the trombone!
Back in the mid 90s, I worked at an independent record distributor based in Tottenham. It was basically a warehouse with an office at the side where the sales folk tried to persuade record shops to take our stuff and I was doing account-y type stuff. Anyway – it was used in Crocodile Tears (with Jimmy Nail) and they tarted the pretty scruffy place up with pot plants and such and gave the impression that the CDs/Records were actually manufactured and distributed from the same place. I think it was on screen for about 10 seconds.
I was born in Surrey. my mum is from Shepperton, my dad later revealed he had been an extra as a child in a film made at Shepperton (still trying to search the clip,)
But anyway, as an 8 year old (1979/80) both I and my dad clearly remember visiting Chobham Common where they were then filming Superman II. For some strange reason you could actually enter the set, we went one evening and took a roll of photo’s – sadly long since lost. They had the cars and everything there, assume Terence Stamp had probably been filming there that very afternoon. Was very cool to later see the film and the set we’d walked around. Someone has made a fan vid of some of the scenes – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHnNyhf2bg
I need to have a think about some of the others, loads of stuff filmed near where we lived but Superman II is the one I clearly remember.
On a trip to Languedoc we headed to the coast one day and found ourselves on a beach with what one might call beach huts only these were gigantic compared to what one gets in the UK. They are on stilts and Betty Blue and her man are painting one such dwelling in that movie, somewhat déshabillé as I recall.
Living in Oxford as I did, the city is an oft used setting. Morse being the obvious example. Of course they cut out all the shitty shopping streets, selecting only the most photogenic areas, like selective memory. Judicious editing allows Morse’s Jag to make impossible journeys across town to maintain the picturesque backdrop.
For unpicturesque backdrops, an area not far from where my mum lives in Sheffield was regularly used by Shane Meadows when he was filming his ‘This is England’ series, as it is quite run down, so easily passes as the 70s or 80s.
We recently had a campaign to save a local pub, not far from where we are. as it was used as the local pub in the later series of Last of the Summer Wine. The real landlord had a running battle with local residents, after he decided he’d use the pub to display his works of modern art, which meant a few broken hoovers and chairs, etc, randomly scattered about the car park. He even invited people to graffiti all over the pub, and not in the artful early 80s New York Hip Hop style! So the place looked like a derelict pub for years before it actually became one.
Morse seconded! I lived in Coombe Road in Jericho which featured in the first episode ‘The Dead of Jericho’. However, each room wasn’t large enough to comfortably accommodate a piano and the pub at the end of the road wasn’t a South London strip pub. I may have misremembered the last part.
If my memory serves, they did use the actual police station for exterior shots
This is the allotment directly behind my childhood home. West Harrow allotments although our house was North Harrow.
The Legal And General building in Kingswood, Surrey stood in for a cryogenic preservation centre, supposedly in California, in the last series of New Tricks. It was closed a couple of years ago. On the same site, St Monica’s was accommodation and a training centre but it had previously been a real life school and on film, St Trinians.
I moved down to the south coast a year ago from Pinner (which, despite being his home town, is not really featured in the new Elton biopic) but Mrs Slug’s youngest sister attends Ruislip High School – which is the school in The Inbetweeners, and the exteriors in this clip were shot in Pinner High Street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtMMq0M5R3U
Pinner used to be good for a pub crawl if you didn’t include The George.
We could form a Pinner clique on here. I grew up there. @kaisfatdad and I went to the same school, Cannon Lane. My mum still lives in Eastcote.
The George was demolished about five years ago.
Per the thread, The Goods and the Leadbetters lived on Kewferry Road in Northwood Hills
That is fascinating @nickduvet. I never expected to find myself reminiscing about Canon Lane School on the AW with someone in New Zealand.
Interested to read Slug’s comment about Pinner not being mentioned much in Rocket Man. And not one singel song about it! Shame on you, Elton!
No, well I seem to recall from our previous chat about it, that your experience was similar to mine, which may not result in much fond reminiscence. But hey ho, character-forming and all that.
As for Rocketman, I didn’t think much of the film, but I did enjoy the depiction of suburban Middlesex in the 50s/60s.
This reminded me that, as well as a couple of Pinner locations (High St, St John;’s church) the early 90s BBC sitcom May to December briefly used the exterior of my secondary school (Whitmore, previously Lascelles, near Shaftesbury Circle). You may remember the nightclub there that went by various names including The Bird’s Nest, Circles and Bobby McGee’s. The Shaftesbury pub is now a McDonalds and I think they knocked the club down. Whenever I hear Baggy Trousers, I think of the Shaftesbury, where two or three of the male teachers would sometimes retreat to at lunchtime. The school was flattened and rebuilt in 2009. Pretty mediocre in mine and my brother’s time, it’s now considered outstanding. Apparently, Adam and the Ants tub thumper Terry Lee was a pupil in the same year as my brother. Who knew?
We lived on Shaftesbury Avenue from 62-66 before moving to Pinner, so yes I remember Lascelles and the Birds Nest. I was still a nipper, so attended Grange primary school before we moved and I then went to Cannon Lane.
Fellow members of the Harrow area gang may be interested to know that, other than Elton, major musical claims to fame are Ian Dury and Gregory Isaacs; the former being born and raised, and the latter living his final years and dying, in glamorous Harrow Weald, not far from the bus garage.
And W.S. Gilbert of course, if you like that sort of thing.
WS Gilbert’s former home is The Grimsdyke Hotel now. He died in the lake there.
I read a biography of Dury but I don’t remember that although I now know it to be true.
I wonder if The Alma pub is still there?
Nope. The Alma was demolished years ago. Now a block of flats.
Just before it closed, it traded as “The Pickled Newt” so perhaps demolition was for the best.
“Doc Foster” is filmed in Hitchin so lots of places I know pop up.
“Life Begins” with Caroline Quentin and Alexander Armstrong was filmed in St. Albans when I lived there. We used to go to the same coffee shop!
The gatehouse of St Albans Registry Office was the Front Gate for Slade Prison
A very short walk from where I’m sitting in Foxy Towers is this little church, which doesn’t really have a tower:
That’s Hayley Mills, and her co-star was Ian McShane – the film, a sweet little English romance directed by her dad, is called “Sky West and Crooked”.
…The little dog in the picture does look a little like Lovejoy-era McShane, funnily enough.
This is long before Lovejoy!
Friend of mine used to live in Caversham Park Village near the house where the interior shots for The Plank were filmed – there’s a blue plaque there now.
Presumably anybody under 45 envisions The Plank as being a film about somebody who gets half-way through a push-up and can’t seem to get down again.
The eponymous grinning feline was inked into my arm in the tattoo parlour in Royston Vasey, I mean Hadfield, Derbyshire.
I used to live in Cardiff. Doctor Who was basically a diary of my walk to work.
The fountain scene in Babel was just down the road from my apartment in Tokyo.
Got a bit freaked out when I rewatched the Motorhead episode of The Young Ones recentishly and realised the train station they were running to is Temple Meads.
Not an accidental spot, but my wife and I sought out the cafe that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy go to in Before Sunset (spoiler: it’s nowhere bloody near where the film would have you believe it is).
There was an old Monty Python sketch where the screen was tilted 90 degrees and the Pythons were “mountain climbing” a pavement. That was New Malden High Street, where I grew up.
Oo! oo! Me too!! My parents lived on Traps Lane. Remember Cannings the toy shop?
Ah yes, I remember Cannings and know Traps Lane too. We lived in Queen’s Road, off Burlington Road. What period? I was born in 1955. My parents lived there until they died. I sold the old house in 2002.
Did you know that Sandy Denny went to Coombe Girls’ School? John Martyn and Peter Green were born there (well, Kingston Hospital, like me).
I was born in ’61 in Wimbledon. Mum died in ’73 and dad only a year and a half later. My elder brother became my legal guardian and then I lived at his place in north London till I turned 17. But New Malden will always feel like my home town.
I went to Clarence Avenue infants, which was right next door to Coombe Girls School.
I was aware of John Martyn, but I’d always thought Peter Green was an East Ender? Another definite New Malden born musician is Dave Swarbrick. Also Eric Clapton used to frequent the Prince of Wales on the Kingston Road in the early 60s.
Sorry to hear about the tragic loss of your parents so young. That would have been dreadful and life altering. So perhaps New Malden is a fondly remembered golden age of innocence for you? It was a good place to grow up with Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park within walking or biking distance, and later the Toby Jug and Kingston Poly were great music venues – I saw some amazing shows at those places including David Bowie at both.
You may be right about Peter Green: born in Bethnal Green according to Wiki. There is some New Malden connection I know – maybe he lived there later. I remember the Prince Of Wales – my older cousin tooke me to a strip show there! It was a real sleazy place then. You know I didn’t know about Dave Swarbrick, although by coincidence I knew him a little. He lived here in Coventry for years.
I live on the south coast now but visit New Malden very regularly as I’m an AFC Wimbledon season ticket holder. The Prince of Wales was indeed a bit basic! It’s been closed for a couple of years now but is still standing. The Toby Jug has a definite place in music history, and even though I was too young at the time, my brother used to go there and also hung out at the Charrington Bowl ten-pin alley in Tolworth. Did you know that The Fountain pub shut down about six months ago and is due to be demolished for flats?
My Dad played full back for the other Wimbledon many years ago. He was a postman in New Malden like for ever; he probably delivered to Traps Lane. Actually, come to think of it so did I. I did the post at Christmas about 72-73 time. Jimmy Tarbuck lived up there somwhere. I had to get him to sign for something and he told me to fuck off. Nice guy.
I didn’t know the Fountain had closed. At least Frederick W Paine Undertakers is still there – or isn’t it? I haven’t been back to NM for a few years. I was arrested in the Fountain once. I looked like some felon and got hauled over the road to the cop shop. My Dad had to bring my passport down to prove my ID.
Apologies to other Afterwordies reading this unabashed nostalgia!
The “original” Wimbledon, please, not the “other” Wimbledon! It’s the same club as far as the fans are concerned. The original was stolen from us by that soul-less concrete new town in Bucks! Which years did your dad play for us?
Paine the undertakers is still trading, but the cop shop became a pub years ago, and probably took most of Fountain’s trade.
Also sorry to those AF’ers with zero interest in obscure south-west London suburbs. We’ll get a room next time.
Which years? No idea, but my Dad would have been 99 last week so there’s some parameters. The cop shop a pub? Really? Good god. And they’re still trading and the Fountain is derelict? Blimey.
Off to bed.
The BBC did a post-apocalyptic drama a few years’ ago. They filmed quite a few scenes outside my local Tesco…they didn’t even bother trying to make it look any worse.
I live in San Pedro, 30 miles from Hollywood. We have the harbor, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach right down the road. There have been hundreds of TV shows and movies filmed here. You can’t go out on a Saturday night without bumping into a camera crew somewhere in town.
it must be hell when Tarantino is filming.
Having just seen ‘Once Upon A Time…’ the attention to period detail in the street scenes is tremendous, but must take yonks to create.
Living in Belfast large parts of Line of Duty are very familiar.
When I lived in London, The Bill used a flat I was co-habiting for filming. Druggies squalid abode when on screen, which to be brutal was pretty good type casting.
I can remember taking a Geography field trip to Ivinghoe Beacon and coming across none other than Whoopi Goldberg taking a break from filming something called The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns in a neighbouring field.
Our house in Brisbane is on the books of Queensland Film Locations – a woman turned up on the doorstep one day on a hunch and asked to look at it. It’s a nice little earner, and tax-free too – you’re allowed to claim it as a hobby, weirdly enough.
It’s mostly ads, but if you watch a frankly bonkers Netflix show called Tidelands you can see people having wild sex in our kitchen, and a bloke putting his undercrackers on in our bedroom in exactly the same spot I do.
It starred Elsa Pataky (Mrs Chris Hemsworth) and when she was spotted in our front yard the rumour mill went into overdrive. People in the local Facebook group were swearing blind he’d been seen in our street when he was in fact in LA. Interesting illustration of how fake news gets going.
I live about half a mile from where BBC daytime soap Doctors is filmed. My wife and I went for a walk a few months ago and were surprised to find ourselves passing the Mill Health Centre.
I often look out for these locations, and of course in London it’s hard to cross the street without finding one. This is me outside the secret headquarters in Killing Eve, just off Trafalgar Square. No autographs, thank you.
Glad it’s not just me then!
We were going for a day out around Bakewell, which is always a treat in itself, but we went for a walk in Dovedale first. I’m a fan of zombie films and they filmed a scene from The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue on the stepping stones, so me and the kids posed for photos, taking turns at being the zombie. We then went to the church in Hathersage, where they also filmed a zombie attack in the movie. We were surprised to find that Little John (as in one of Robin Hood’s merry men) is buried there.
This is my local cinema in Holloway. Even if you’re not from this manor, it.s still a great sketch to enjoy.
I worked in the office block featured in the shooting of President Bartlet.
I remember about 20 years ago walking into the Bradbury building in Los Angeles and having it suddenly dawn on me that it was the same building as the one used in the closing stages of Blade Runner.
Also when I lived in Bristol I remember walking into the Cock of The North pub and realising it was the Kebab and Calculator from the Young Ones
Memorably played by Madness!
They should have sampled the line “You hum it… I’ll smash yer face in”
Cock of the North was an ugly pub, looks like it’s still there, but renamed and refurbed. Couldn’t really see the Young Ones being able to afford a place in leafy Henleaze
The office of MrsP’s architecture firm featured in Catastrophe when the fella tried to become a male model.
I seem to remember spotting at least one member of staff featuring in the background.
MrsP was most taken aback to arrive at work one day to find Sharon Horgan sitting in reception.
Not for from me there is a short heritage railway line, covering the stretch from Epping to Ongar where the London Underground Central Line no longer runs. A while ago it was rented out to be used as the set for a porn film, much to local consternation. I picture some bloke with his trousers round his ankles having his concentration broken by the thought, ‘Hang on a moment … is that Ongar through that window?’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-32149393
Is there still a colony of scorpions (not the WoCHMs, I hasten to add) at Ongar station?
Oof, just saw that date on this one.
Seeing as I’m here though, if anyone still cares and with particular reference to the original post, my mate’s flat was used as Johnny Vegas’s gaff in Happiness.
I used to work in Croydon and our car park and the road next to it was always being used as a set for “The Bill”.
I’m led to believe that “Dr Who” used to be filmed at a sandpit about a mile away from me on the road to Reigate and the BBC used a lot of locations around this area for the series.
The first wedding in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was filmed at St Michaels Church Betchworth a few miles west of here.
Oooh, you’re not far from me then (I’m in Redhill).
I’ve been wondering if it’s the Doctor Who quarry that’s now a lake with a beach on that keeps popping up on one of our local Facebook parents pages as a place to visit. Just imagining having a picnic there while imagining it as Skaro or something.
On a slight tangent, the houses in the video below are in Reigate (off one of the roads up Reigate Hill towards Junction 8 of the M25). A mate at mine at school said at the time he was kept awake by INXS filming a video down his road. Took years to find it.
And while I’m on pop videos, a good chunk of the Beautiful South’s “Good as Gold” video was filmed around Bletchingley and Godstone which is only a few miles down the road.
The Bill used to do a lot of filming in Wandsworth too.
They almost caused a major incident when filming a scene in the (former) Arndale Centre car park.
People with guns were spotted in the car park with the result that Met Police Armed Response were deployed. The producers hadn’t put the relevant information out. Nobody was hurt, though I suspect someone on the production side may have got a severe arse kicking.
A similar thing happened in my area a month ago or so, despite the production company having gotten the permits to film scenes for a crime series, with fake guns; all the relevant information given to the police.
Someone saw a guy running in the street with a gun and called the cops, who showed up quickly and wrestled the popular young actor to the ground, before the mistake was cleared up. That could have gone really wrong…
I used to commute through Marylebone Station, which was often taken over by film crews.
As a tourist in LA I was on my way back from Mann’s Chinese Theatre and saw a large film crew, for what turned out to be “Speed”. After an hour of watching more or less nothing happen I gave up.
Marylebone Station was taken over by the Hard Day’s Night film crew, IIRC.
Few years ago my partner and I were down in Brighton and I was keen to find the alley where Jimmy takes Steph to escape the rioting mods and rockers, and as featured on the cover of the soundtrack for Quadrophenia. Knew I was in the vicinity as we went down a few backstreets, and then suddenly there it was. At that exact moment someone opened a nearby backdoor to put some rubbish out, saw me standing there and said “yes that’s the place”. Obviously not uncommon for people to turn up there looking for it. Also went into the backyard where Steph and Jimmy ended up. Did not replicate their subsequent shenanigans however.
Living 20 minutes from Brighton, I can confirm that the tiny alleyway off East Street is as much a tourist attraction as the pier or the Pavillion. In fact there’s now a proper council street sign up on the wall there; officially it is ‘Quadrophenia Alley’.
Readers interested in taking their partner there and replicating the film’s youthful frolics are advised that your ardour may well be expunged rapidly by the constant and overwhelming stench of piss. Particularly romantic on hot days.
Bella Union record and coffee shop, usually staffed by the ever so pleasant Simon Raymonde, is along an adjoining ‘twitten’. I suspect he regularly has to give directions to ageing mods eager to take their girlfriends up the alley.
I’m from Chester which has a lot of possible attractive, historical settings but I’ve only ever seen it in Hollyoaks and an episode of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series which I find quite surprising. I guess there isn’t that much historical film or TV these days.
My Dad used to help out on the Ten Tors walk on Dartmoor. He once emerged on foot from a dense Forestry Commission plantation, to find himself surrounded by a rag tag bunch of American Revolutionaries engaged in a furious musket exchange with Redcoats. “CUT!” went the shout, and a clipboard-clutching film crew member hurried him away, out of shot. “Sorry about this, we’re in the middle of filming. That’s Mr. Pacino over there.” he said, indicating a figure in the middle distance. To which my father replied, with a puzzled frown, “Who’s Mr. Pacino?”.
I live at the quiet end of a dead-end street in central Stockholm, and it’s been regularly used for filming (mostly television it seems). Notes asking for flats to borrow for location shoots are often stuck to the doors in this area, and every now and then I’ve walked out of the building to find a part of the street shut off and people with clip-boards preventing the public from running into shot.
I’ve yet to spot any of it on TV however, because it seems to be mainly a location for crime/cop shows, and I’m not a big fan of those in general. Since the street has gotten a bit more gentrified and spruced up in recent years and lost some of its shabbier charm, they don’t film here as often…
I made a special trip to Pennan, where most of the village location sets for Local Hero were filmed. Supposed to epitomise a West Highland coastal village it is in, Aberdeenshire. On the east. Fabulous place, mind, and very evocative of a favourite film.
Aberdeen rellies tell me of excitement in Pennan as BT wanted to remove the red phone box.
I live in Sunbury, just across the river from Walton on Thames, where many outside Monty Python sketches were filmed. In Sunbury itself, various street scenes from The Inbetweeners (very popular with the young people I understand) were shot.
I grew up in that general area but couldn’t quite narrow it down to where exactly it was filmed so thanks for that. The episode at Thorpe Park suported my theory that it was filmed around there.
The Monty Python sketch where we follow the boring day in the life of an accountant was filmed at the newsagent around the corner from our house. It’s a pretty memorable scene.
I’ve remembered a few others.
Visiting my father one night I found that the street down from Batley Station ( known to the Hep’s dad fact fans) was a stand in for war torn Berlin for the filming of Shine on Harvey Moon.
Round the corner was used in the film Blow Dry.
Years ago Diana Dors ‘visited’ for the film Value for Money (actually she stayed back in the studio). A brass band was seen marching up the same street.
A friend’s Halifax house was fleetingly seen in a scene from the History Boys.
The Piece Hall in Halifax was used for a scene in Brassed Off, unfortunately you just miss seeing another friend’s old record shop there.
Film location.
“The Likely Lads.”
The Newcastle library scene, where Bob is pissed after the “pub closing down” scene and drops a dart board on Thelma’s foot, was filmed at the library in Elstree/Boreham Wood (does anyone know the difference?).
Still a library about 7 years ago, and ABSOLUTELY as it was in the film when I did research there … now no longer serving that function.
Rather pleasingly, picked up a dvd of the film in a Boreham Wood/Elstree High Street chareeddee shop after a Boreham Wood home match.
Unsurprisingly, given the proximity of the studios, there’s been loads of things filmed around Borehamwood’s streets, especially on the main shopping drag, Shenley Road.
In the original ‘Bedazzled’ with Pete & Dud, the Wimpy Bar where Dudley Moore works as a cook lusting after waitress Eleanor Bron was at 108 Shenley Road, a stone’s throw from Elstree Studios.
Elstree becomes Borehamwood once you get past the station. Elstree is mostly posh and Borehamwood mostly isn’t.
I was told by somebody I did some work there for “The trouble with Borehamwood is that everyone is either a gangster or else they think they’re a gangster.”
That can’t be entirely true as my sister, her daughter and her youngest son (and their respective families) all live there. They are not gangsters as far as I know.
Living in Portland, all of Portlandia, obviously. Also Grimm, not sure if that made it to the UK, but it was kind of OK for the first season.
Portlandia caused an interesting “art mirroring life” spat- the feminist bookshop skits were filmed in an actual Feminist bookstore, who fell out with them.
Summary of spat here
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/30/496072761/feminist-bookstore-slams-portlandia-and-says-show-can-no-longer-film-there
The bookstore\Community Center has since closed, citing, amongst other factors “…an inability to “reform and re-envision” a space founded on “white, cis feminism (read: white supremacy)” to make it more reflective of contemporary feminism.”
Portlandia was like a documentary of the East side of the city.
I used to work in Sea Containers House on the South Bank in London when it was offices prior to its sell off and revamp as a luxury hotel. The walk to and from there to the nearby Waterloo Station took me along Roupel Street, which is a well-preserved row of 1930’s brick built terraced houses..
It’s been used relentlessly for pretty much everything with that period flavour. One of which was ‘Call The Midwife’. I happened across a shoot for the first series. I asked one of the runners what was being filmed. ‘A new series called Call The Midwife. It’s all about midwifes’, he said. And he was right.
I had a girlfriend who had a flat share behind The Young Vic in the mid 90s so The Kings Arms in Roupel Street was my weekday local. We spent the weekdays in Waterloo and the weekends in Godalming, where I lived at the time.
Small world. Though I wouldn’t want to wallpaper it.
Yes, I’ve been in the Kings Arms a few times.
Also, ITV Studios were just round the corner. I sometimes saw Graham Norton walking his two massive dogs around the area.
Worthing pier crops up a fair bit as it’s largely unchanged and has a 1930s clock and facade. The Lido next door was used in Stan and Ollie.
Worthing’s promenade and the lovely old Dome Cinema feature in the Emily Lloyd comedy/drama ‘Wish You Were Here’. A great film, regardless of where it was shot.
Worthing unchanged? They’ve got a Labour councillor now. When I grew up there in the 60s/70s/80s they used to hang them.
Also the Dolphins from the Dolphinarium in Brighton were put in the Lido when their pool was being repaired in the 70s.
There’s 18 Labour councillors in Worthing & Adur now. It’s a quiet revolution.
The place’ll have a Green MP before too long just because Brighton’s got one.
The Tories and Lib Dem’s haven’t done much for the town since I moved here in 2002.
Living in Manchester and watching Cold Feet in the 90s you would be distracted by trying to spot the location. Loads of scenes around St Peters square / Central library. The office used by David was actually the mezzanine floor in the Bridgewater Hall. you can clearly see the Midland Hotel through the window. In the re-boot series of a couple of years ago Adams flat was at the top of King Street but in the final scene when they went onto the roof they actually used the roof garden of the Midland Hotel….
Friends of mine live in Bray, near Dublin. This was only a year or so ago. She is out with the kids one weekday morning walking on the seafront. From a distance she can see four men walking around a bit aimlessly. As she gets closer she realises its is Messrs Vox, Edge, Clayton and Mullen.
As she walks past a voice says “how goes it?” She says “ah grand” in reply and walks on. She sees a small van parked up with camera equipment in it and assumes there’s a photo shoot going in. Anton Corbijn? She didn’t know. He might have been in the toilet.
I haven’t stumbled across any TV locations @hubert-rawlinson. Good luck with that hamper though.
When I worked in London, I used to buy my lunchtime sandwich from Speedy’s Cafe on North Gower Street. Next door is used as the Baker Street residence of the BBC’s Sherlock.
When I was a kid living in south Manchester, our house was used in a one off drama. It was something like Play for Today, but I can’t remember whether it was the BBC or Granada. Our house was chosen because of the proximity of a nearby school. As a kid it was all very exciting, with giant lights in our hallway, and crew all over the place. I’d love to find out the name of the play. I can’t even remember the year, but it was probably 1979 or 1980. The house was only on screen for ten seconds or so.
According to Wikiedpia, and specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_programmes_set,_produced_or_filmed_in_Manchester there was a one-off play called ‘Comedians’ made in 1975?
Thanks. Yes, I’ve seen that list, but its far from exhaustive, and probably won’t include incidental Manchester locations (i.e the play is not specifically set there). Also, I’m pretty sure it was around the turn of the decade. I’ve decided to use the BBC Genome to trawl through old copies of the Radio Times, in case something triggers a memory. This evening I was looking at the first six months of 1981. Play for Today was on BBC One, Tuesday evenings, after the Nine o’clock News. Bavarian Nights, starring Bob Peck and Sarah Badel, was broadcast on March 31. The description goes thus: ‘When the dynamic young head-master of St Peter ‘s Primary School decides to liven up a parents’ fund-raising social by hiring a Bavarian band, he little suspects the hidden passions that are about to be unleashed.’ Sounds like an early contender, but I’d need to actually see the thing again to confirm. There is a short clip on Youtube, but I don’t remember the plot at all.
No worries. I’ve just had a look at the ‘Play For Today’ page on IMDB. I had no idea they were so regular, and just assumed they were occasional ‘one-off’ productions.
This comment has more than a hint of hamper about it. But, for the record, it’s Bavarian Night, not Bavarian Nights.
Yes, I’m not sure how many were made in total, but I’m guessing somewhere in the hundreds. They ran for 14 years, I think.1970-1984.
Not trying to breathe life into this thread or reach the hamper but …
Last night watching The Kitchen on Talking Pictures from 61 the young couple cross the road outside the National Portrait Gallery you can see the Edith Cavell statue in the background.
We had taken those self same steps yesterday, I appreciate London appears a vast amount in films but a marvellous piece of timing.
A friend of mine is a sound engineer for STV. He has spent a fair chunk of his career working on Taggart shoots, which always involve some level of passers-by wanting to know what is going on. On the rare occasion that he is working on something that is NOT Taggart, the unspoken rule for all the crew is that, no matter what the actual film is, when a wee wifie asks “whit’s this fur, son?” they reply “Taggart”.
He was part of the shoot for “House Of Mirth”, which stars Gillian Anderson in a Victorian-era drama. Lots of top hats, bustles, horse-drawn carriages, etc. Ms Anderson herself was swishing by, looking ravishing. Cue wee wifie – “whit’s this fur, son?”. My pal – “Taggart. It’s like a prequel thing”. Wee wifie goes back to her group of friends and confidently tells them “It’s Taggart, aye. Taggart’s Granda was a polis too.”
Update
Just reading one of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London books (as recommended on this very site) and in it he mentions a pub the Rising Sun near Smithfield Market.
Oddly enough I was in there only last month as I met an ex-student from the school I used to work at. I don’t normally drink in pubs (not a great fan of beer anymore) so this was an unusual occurrence. Or is it that unusual?
” Of all the pubs in all the world …..”
I once read a Peter Robinson book in which Inspector Banks had to visit London to talk to someone and met them in a pub just behind Oxford Circus. At the point where I was reading that page I was myself visiting London and sitting in a pub just behind Oxford Circus (The Clachan on Kingly Street).
Rewatching Quantum of Solace last night reminded me that on a day out in Bregenz down from Switzerland we visited the lakeside opera house, and saw this set for Tosca. I think it had just been erected when we visited.
Those were the days when we could wander about the world without a care.
I watched “The Bank Job” with Jason Statham a week or so back. It was based on the true story of a robbery of a Lloyds Bank that I’d used a few times on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road. I was impressed with they had used the actual locations – the shops alongside the bank, the lookout from the rooftop opposite where I could see my old workplace in the distance, the final scenes at Paddington Station.
Except – the bank itself and the shops were a set at Pinewood, and some of what looked like Paddington was actually Chatham Dockyard. The real bits were the shots from the rooftop and some of Paddingtons platforms. Still, Saffron Burrows was in it ….deep sigh ….
I watched Des this week as I’d seen part of it being filmed in Muswell Hill at an estate agents either some time last year or the end of 2018.
However no such scene appeared in the finished programme.
Did they change their mind about its use and did it appear only on the cutting room floor?
It’ll be in the “Extra” section of the DVD….
Earlier this summer I found myself at the same place David MacNaughton and Griffin Dunne get dropped off in at the very beginning of An American Werewolf In London. It’s not in Yorkshire at all, but the Welsh borders, quite close to Hay On Wye. I still made sure I stayed on the path though.
Rik Mayall’s in that pub. Doesn’t speak as I recall. Amayyyyyzing.
Indie horror film Spring was filmed in my neck of the woods and features many of my regular haunts. It’s not a bad little film. About a bloke who falls in love with a woman, only to discover that she’s an octopus. Bummer, dude.
Big fan of Spring. If HP Lovecraft had written Before Sunrise…