More Fannish 50 ramble

[tellshannon815]

So a couple of things recently have made me think about this one - firstly watching One Day as I know Edinburgh quite well - when I read the book ages ago, I realised I actually knew where 17 Rankeillor Street was as it was in the next street to the B&B that I'd stayed in when I'd been to Edinburgh the year before (I took its picture on a later visit, and compared it with the house they used on the show. It's not the real one in the show.) Also recently there was a bit of a fuss here in the UK about the portrayal of Milton Keynes on the soap opera Eastenders, and their MP weighed in.

So, has anyone seen their local area portrayed in any of their fandoms, be it canon or fan creation, and if so how did you feel about the portrayal? I haven't seen it so much with my home town, although years ago when I read The Follies Of The King by Jean Plaidy, I did smile to myself when Hugh le Despenser was given the choice of Hereford or death, and he chose death. We rate a mention in My Fair Lady for hurricanes hardly happening (true), and I've been meaning to check out the Rivers of London series where it rates a mention.

Where I have seen it more is St Andrews, where I went to university. If you've ever been in the Merlin fandom, you may well have come across The Student Prince, where Merlin and Arthur are roommates at St Andrews. I can confirm that the university traditions and the locations are all pretty much accurate (although I did wonder why Gwen took engineering, since there didn't seem to be an obvious reason for the plot why she needed to. St Andrews didn't offer engineering and still doesn't; an acquaintance who wanted to study that but also wanted to follow his girlfriend there ended up enrolling at Dundee, which is what Gwen would have had to do.)

Val McDermid's The Distant Echo is also set there (I did see the TV adaptation, but remember the book better ) - the Lammas Bar doesn't exist, but from the description of where it is, it sounds like it's on the site of a real pub, and the Fife Park accommodation also exists (I do remember wondering whether the guy with all the drums and stuff in his room would really have needed to sleep on his friend's floor because there was no space for him with all the music stuff, because I'd remembered Fife Park rooms as being bigger than that, but acknowledge that I never actually saw one with a drum kit in!)

Comments

[meridian_rose]

Hereford or death, and he chose death. LOL! I haven't seen much of Hereford I admit, more Ross-on-Wye and other parts of the Wye valley.

Birmingham appeared in "Crossroads" back in the day and is the setting for "Peaky Blinders". I don't think I've seen Solihull appear specifically, though I have seen it appear in one-offs such as a client on "Dogs Behaving Very Badly" got a visit from the dog trainer.

The art gallery in Peaky Blinders isn't the actual art gallery in Brum proper, but one of the smaller ones which was probably easier to to film at. Same with the Cathedral. A lot of filming was done at Black Country museum which has the right period features, so very little was actually filmed here.

LOL, I looked at this site https://www.birminghamworld.uk/lifestyle/retro/best-tv-shows-made-birmingham-4252167 and I'd forgotten that TIZWAS was filmed here, and that the 1990s Gladiators was filmed at NEC. My dad got to meet some of the gladiators when they visited his workplace.

I remember "Boon" but had forgotten that was set locally but several of these others I've not seen or never heard of and/or didn't realise they were 'local' e.g. "Doctors".

I used to visit Chester quite a bit, knew someone who lived there at the time, and of course "Hollyoaks" is set there, while I've not watched the show I've seen clips and the opening.

It does make you think about including a few details when writing fiction; does this seem accurate to someone who knows the place; and how much does it matter? :)

[tellshannon815]

I won't be surprised to see Freddie on Dogs Behaving Very Badly!

It's possibly easier when writing in a setting that's been specially created for a fictional universe - would people be less likely to notice a mistake in, say, Westeros, than in St Andrews? I haven't watched The Crown yet, but I can see myself getting to Season 6 and thinking things like "That seafood restaurant was an amusement arcade when they were there!" I know those are things that wouldn't matter in terms of the story, but I'd probably still notice.

Chester is where my parents went to college, I've been a couple of times, I've never really watched Hollyoaks apart from once in 2001 trying to see what my friend was talking about when he thought I looked like some character called Anna. (I still don't see it). And while Crossroads was before my time, I do remember looking at some of my uncle's old schoolbooks from the 70s and he and his friends used to write notes in them like "Hugh Mortimer dies 2night" so I got some sense of the storylines.

[meridian_rose]

I haven't been to Chester for years but it was lovely :)

[spaciireth]

Not sure I've ever experienced it since I grew up in a fairly small place, though I have been recently recommended a romance novel set in Newcastle (Australia), which is probably the closest I'm going to get. It's the nearest city and where I went to school. I have experienced the opposite, though, where local locations have been used in film/TV to stand-in for something else, which is always quite fun to watch.

[tellshannon815]

Doctor Who actually filmed quite near me recently in an upcoming episode - if you see one in some kind of 50s diner, that's the one. Sex Education was also filmed near me, I have yet to watch that despite my coworker recommending it about 4 years ago.

[spaciireth]

Ooh cool! I'll keep an eye out. Maybe it's in the Beatles episode?

I watched Sex Education to check out Ncuti Gatwa in something prior to DW, and it's very good, though it was getting a bit silly by the end of the third series so I haven't watched any more.

[tellshannon815]

It was something that was only filmed in January this year, so I think it might be a while yet before we see it.

[meridian_rose]

Oooh Dr Who! I've visited Cardiff Bay (Torchwood) and my brother-in-law knew several filming locations well, one the locals call "Chippy Lane" for the amount of takeaways on the street :)