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Have you ever sat on your sofa with a cuppa, watching your favourite TV show and suddenly recognise a familiar location?

Salford, home to the famous Coronation Street cobbles, is becoming an increasingly popular filming destination for many other TV shows.

Channel 4’s The Circle this year moved from its base in London to Costa Del Salford – a phrase well used in the popular reality series. The show used one of the many new residential apartment blocks in Salford, to film the show which is hosted by television presenter, Emma Willis.

Rosie Wilkes, one of The Circle’s production managers, said: “Both Studio Lambert and Channel 4 are committed to making programmes outside of London, and as the Greater Manchester area had so many housing development opportunities, that for our programme (filming in an entire apartment block) it seemed like the perfect location”.

She added: “We were very pleased to have found the apartments and it’s been a successful shoot!”.

The Circle crew were able to use a building no longer used by the University of Salford, located nearby, which served as their production village. Wilkes said: “The University of Salford building had proved to be a brilliant find near the filming block, and we’re so pleased to have bought life back to the much-loved media building!”.

It was revealed how a small team from The Circle were actually on site for over a month before the main production period began. The second series of The Circle premiered on 24th of September 2019 and ran for a total of three weeks.

During this time the production crew were keen to keep any disruption to a minimum and wherever possible attempted to communicate their plans with local residents in Salford.

Fortunately many Salford residents were actually fans of the show, which centres on social media, with Wilkes commenting how “… a number of the local residents applied for tickets and came to watch in the audience of our live Friday night shows on Channel 4”.

It is still unknown where The Circle will be filming its next series with Wilkes concluding: “Currently we’re unsure of our future plans, but we’ll definitely be considering Salford for future series’!”.

The iconic Salford Lads Club, located on St Ignatius Walk, has been a favoured filming location for programmes including the award-winning comedy-drama series Cold Feet. The ITV show featured the recognisable Club in their latest series. This popular venue has also appeared in Channel 4’s Shameless and series four of BBC hit drama Peaky Blinders.     

The successful comedy-drama series Fresh Meat, starring comedian Jack Whitehall and The Inbetweeners actor Joe Thomas, also chose to film in Salford, with ‘The Kings Arms’ pub featuring in regular episodes.

Lisa Connor, 35, who is the current owner of ‘The Kings Arms’ located on Bloom Street, Salford, explained how the Fresh Meat’s production team and cast had visited on several occasions “The first time they were here for three whole days, the second time for two whole days, and then also a further two days. Then some edits- they were here really early in the morning!”.

‘The Kings Arms’ pub. Photo Credit: Olivia Morris

The Salford pub, leased in 2011 to 2015 by lead singer of The Housemartins and The Beautiful South- Paul Heaton, has also been used as a filming location for Hairy Bikers and various music videos. Connor also revealed how: “We nearly had Peaky Blinders but they went to Stockport instead… it’s to do with timings”.

Connor, who took over ‘The Kings Arms’ premises in December 2015 said: “Lots of Fresh Meat fans still come in, but I don’t think it’s added anything- it’s just something nice to talk about. Also, when they [Fresh Meat fans] come in, it doesn’t look anything like it did in Fresh Meat because they redecorate it all”.

She added how Fresh Meat “… use upstairs because there’s so many cast. They use the theatre upstairs- there’s a green room”.

Connor also described how she would try and arrange for the production teams to arrive before four o’clock in the afternoon so she could still open to the public. She explained how “…otherwise it costs them [production crews] too much money- it depends on budgets”.

She concluded how she believed many Salford residents enjoy seeing their local community being used in such well-known programmes but disclosed how occasionally “The residents around here get annoyed because they [Production crews] shut all the streets because they’ve got lots of money. They put lots of road closures in so it’s not just them filming, they have wagons upon wagons that turn up outside, so they [Salford residents] struggle to park. But the crew are really respectful and they run to schedule”.

Salford Pub ‘The Kings Arms’. Photo Credit: Olivia Morris

From Salford Pubs to Salford University. Several of the University of Salford Campuses have been selected as filming locations for many TV shows. ITV drama Butterfly, which told the story of a child’s transgender journey, used the University campuses located at Peel Park.

The three-part series starring Anna Friel filmed some scenes close to the Clifford Whitworth Library, with background shots also featuring multiple Salford student accommodation buildings. Many adaptations to the University layout were made in order to make it a convincible hospital. The show, also shot some scenes at the Salford University campus located at Media City.

The University of Salford has been used as a realistic hospital on more than one occasion, with BBC drama Years and Years filming in the New Adelphi building. ITV series The Widower starring Sheridan Smith, also featured a shot of the University’s Maxwell Building.

The New Adelphi Walkway. Photo Credit: Olivia Morris

Recent filming of new Sky comedy drama Brassic sees actress Michelle Keegan, who has Salfordian roots, walk through the New Adelphi walkway after leaving a lecture room. It has also been confirmed that the ‘surgery’ featured in the hit Sky series, was in fact filmed in one of the Frederick Road Campus rooms of the University.

Frederick Road Campus. Photo Credit: Olivia Morris

Although the Coronation Street studios are located at Media City, the production crew actually extend their Salford filming to various locations around the Greater Manchester area, including filming that took place in May earlier this year. The character Gemma Winter, played by Dolly-Rose Campbell, was spotted filming scenes in Langworthy Park, Salford and continued filming nearby on St Luke’s Road.

Photo Credit: Google Maps

 

 

Michelle Keegan, Anna Friel, James Nesbitt are among the stars that have walked the streets of Salford- confirming how Salford is certainly on the map as a popular filming destination.

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