Ralph Oswick: Film-makers’ geography-defying tricks don’t fool me
Imust admit I have a secret vice. I’m a location spotter. I can’t watch a film or a telly programme without looking into the background. I like to know where I am!
I’m not like these blokes (mainly blokes) who frequent the Reelstreets website, trying to match screen grabs from old movies with “now” snaps taken from exactly the same angle. But I did once miss the vital dénouement of an episode of Poirot on discovering that the lock on one side of a door was different on the other side. Two doors! Two locations! I was thrilled!
I once noticed a tiny bit of iron railing behind Frank Findlay and knew it to be the corner opposite Sally Lunn’s on what was then the Bath Salvation Army Hostel. And don’t get me on brickwork. I can spot the difference between vacuum moulded stonework (and even mismatched brick wallpaper: look out for the corners!) and real bricks. Set designers seem woefully ignorant of Flemish Bond.
To me it’s obvious that the excellent series Ripper Street was filmed in Dublin or Cork, not the East End. As for Call the Midwife, it screams Heritage Dockyard Sheerness rather than Stepney. Smug? Moi?
The Old Royal Naval College in
Greenwich pops up endlessly. From Moll Flanders to Pirates of the Caribbean, there’s really no disguising it to anyone who has taken a trip down the river. In Starter for Ten it even stood in for Bristol University. Delusions of grandeur?
Once my mum was sitting on a wall under the ubiquitous Greenwich colonnade while a period drama was being filmed all round her. “Do you want me to move?” asked mum. “No love,” came the reply, “We’ll digitally erase you.” Mum was quite affronted.
Trouble is, I always want to nudge the person sitting next to me and tell them: “That’s not Paris, that’s Prague.” (Maigret.) Or: “Did you notice, she went in through the front door at Chatsworth but emerged into the vestibule at Holkham Hall?” (The Duchess.)
I admit, I did once contact Reelstreets. Gorgeous Monica Vitti was seen emerging from Edinburgh Waverley station whereupon bizarrely she immediately crossed the road at the top of Bath’s Russel Street where it joins Rivers Street. There was Christchurch in full view. Seconds later she was hurrying down Prince’s Street, back in
Auld Reekie! I got a somewhat curt reply. They knew it of course.
Tables turn. We were watching a travelogue about the island of Nevis, West Indies, a favourite haunt of mine when I’m feeling flush. The presenter had just stepped out of her launch onto the palmfringed beach and entered what they described as a lively local hostelry. And ever observant of what goes on in the background, I saw myself on a bar stool, a cool lager in hand, and obviously boring the socks off some unfortunate stranger.
Ralph Oswick was artistic director of Natural Theatre for 45 years and is now an active patron of Bath Comedy Festival