Television and Film
Wirral has hosted a variety of different films and television programmes. Chariots of Fire was filmed at various locations on the Wirral including the Oval Sports Centre, Bebington and the Woodside Ferry Terminal while the Ealing comedy, "The Magnet" (1950), was filmed in Wallasey and New Brighton.
More recently, The 51st State was partly filmed around the docks in Birkenhead and most recently Awaydays, based on a novel of the same name by Kevin Sampson, was filmed extensively in Wirral.
The Queensway Tunnel in Birkenhead is also featured in the Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 during the scene where Harry and Hagrid escape on a flying motorcycle and pass through the tunnel. The scene was filmed while the tunnel was closed for repairs.
In television, sitcom Watching, produced by Granada Television between 1987 and 1993, was partly set and filmed at various Wirral locations, particularly Meols. More recently, Mike Bassett: Manager, starring Ricky Tomlinson was a follow-up to the film Mike Bassett: England Manager, and featured a fictional football club called Wirral County, a parody of Tranmere Rovers, who Bassett (Tomlinson) managed after being sacked from the England job. It is also believed that the Lime Pictures production Hollyoaks films occasionally, on location, in Wirral.
Read more about this topic: Wirral Peninsula
Famous quotes containing the words television and, television and/or film:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy.... In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass but my madness speaks;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)