ITV is launching another big crime drama with The Tower, which stars Game of Thrones alum Gemma Whelan as a no-nonsense detective tasked with getting to the bottom of two shocking deaths.
The series opens with a veteran beat police officer and a teenage girl plummeting from the top of a tower block in south-east London, with little indication of how the terrible turn of events came about.
The only people who stand to shed light on the matter are rookie cop Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif) and a five-year-old boy, both of whom were left alive on the rooftop and may have witnessed exactly what happened.
When Adama goes missing and is thought to be in grave danger, Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins (Whelan) steps in to track her down and get to the bottom of this grisly case.
Based on the novel Post Mortem, written by former Met Police Officer Kate London, and adapted by Homeland executive producer Patrick Harbinson, this three-part drama has potential to be huge for ITV.
But despite its setting in London’s East End, The Tower never actually filmed there, with several northern locations standing in for England’s capital city instead. Read on for details.
Where was ITV’s The Tower filmed?
While the story of ITV’s The Tower is set in London, production looked north when deciding where to shoot the hotly-anticipated series, with co-star Emmett J Scanlan (Peaky Blinders) naming two major cities as key locations.
He revealed: “I was either filming in Liverpool or Manchester so frequenting streets that I used to frequent back in 2010 [while appearing on Hollyoaks]. That was definitely a trip down memory lane.
“I don’t really mind where I’m filming so long as I’m filming. I’m usually my happiest when I’m on set and we get to play, get to dance, get to make believe. It’s the creative process that’s important to me.”
It’s understood that The Tower also filmed around Cheshire, with the Liverpool Echo posting snaps of the cast shooting a funeral scene at Runcorn Cemetery, located in the borough of Halton.
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Those familiar with the county may also recognise the surroundings in another key moment, with Scanlan naming a “beautiful” local park as the setting of a “crazy” scene between himself and co-star Tahirah Sharif.
He teased: “There’s a place in Knutsford called Tatton Park, which is beautiful. I shot there for Peaky Blinders season six and then two weeks later I ended up in the exact same location for The Tower, back in that park where you can see wild animals walking around, deer, all sorts of stuff.”
Scanlan added: “There is this crazy seven-minute scene that me and Tahirah have and it’s beautifully written. The weather that day was insane. We got rain, we got gale-force winds, we got sun – all in any one take. It was pure chaos but in a way that weather took us out of our thinking brains into whatever moments we were in.”
Sticking to a similar area, the cast and crew of The Tower also worked in Glazebury, Warrington, a town located between Manchester and Liverpool, as reported by the Warrington Guardian back in May.
Meanwhile, Wirral Globe noted that the series had also set up camp near Seacombe Ferry Terminal for a scene involving a disused Merseyrail train.
Television productions regularly dress up locations to look like somewhere else, usually as a cost-saving measure, while a localised shooting schedule will have also made COVID-19 precautions easier to manage.
The Tower premieres on ITV at 9pm on Monday 8th November 2021. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.