We’ve been treated to yet more wonderful film and TV in the second part of 2016, and many more beautiful British places acted as lovely locations.
Liverpool in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Harry Potter spin-off that has smashed the box office is set in New York in 1927 but many of the scenes were, in fact, filmed in Liverpool which makes a good duplicate, much of the architecture having been built at the same time. Liverpool locations used by the film crew include St George’s Hall, interiors of which appear in the trailer, and the world-famous Cunard Building at the dock.
Lancaster House, Eltham Palace and Ely Cathedral, The Crown
Not even TV shows with a £100m budget can get access to HM the Queen’s official residence, so Lancaster House on Pall Mall in central London stood in for State Rooms of Buckingham Palace during filming. Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire in the east of England served as Westminster Abbey for scenes depicting Elizabeth’s coronation as Queen in June 1953 as well as the wedding of the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. The West End’s Lyceum Theatre, the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich and Hatfield House in Hertfordshire also feature.
Tenby, Pembrokeshire, in Sherlock
Despite being a quintessentially London character, the current smash-hit incarnation of Sherlock is, in fact, filmed largely in Wales. The BBC’s Roach Lock studios in Cardiff Bay is used for interiors work and many locations around south Wales double as London. And, although it hasn’t even reached the screen yet, we know that some of the new series of Sherlock was filmed around St Catherine’s Island in the beautiful west Wales town of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, where helicopters were spotted swooping around over the summer (as seen briefly in the trailer). Look out for more when The Six Thatchers airs at 8.30pm on New Year’s Day 2017 on BBC1, with episode two, The Lying Detective, on Sunday 8 January and finale The Final Problem on Sunday 15 January.
Isle of Skye, the Old Man of Hoy and Bamburgh beach, The BFG
The Isle of Skye was used for wide, cinematic shots of the Giant’s Land and offering a wide array of landscape, from mountains, to cliffs, to lochs and moors, it is no wonder why. Also used to create the film’s otherworldly feel was the Old Man of Hoy, Orkney, and Bamburgh Beach in Northumberland.