Tonight the BBC dramatisation of 'Cranford' starts. Knowing that Cranford is based on Knutsford, where I used to work, I was curious to see where it had been filmed and checked the BBC website... it was filmed in Laycock, West Wycombe, Oxfordshire, Ashbridge and Shepperton... anywhere rather than Cheshire it seems. But then I do recall back in the 1980's that parts of 'Empire of the Sun' were filmed in Knutsford because it was evidently a good likeness for China... just not enough like itself I guess. So much for authenticity!
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There's a film called Cutting It, which is overtly set in Keighley, my home town. Apart from a couple of shots of places i knew, everywhere was completely unrecognisable. I Later found out they'd filmed it in Dewsbury or somewhere similar. no idea why. Perhaps we didn't look enough like Yorkshire for Southerners to recognise.
Once i was walking along the canal bank and saw a crew filming a man having half a conversation with nobody. Eventually that was on telly (anybody remember Juliet Bravo?) and he was talking to somebody who had been filmed on the banks of the same canal, but at a point about 30 miles away.
Perhaps all these strange habits led directly to the rise of "reality" telly