When films mangle your local geography

[jason voorhees]

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle has an ending of Harold and Kumar hang-gliding off of a giant cliff in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which couldn't be any more of pancake flat tabletop Nebraskaesque farmland. There isn't even a hill there.

(It's about 2 cm under the "a" in the "maps" watermark - https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/topo...-topo-map.html )

[Tony C]

I wonder whether anyone's ever tried to draw a map of, for example, Morse's Oxford? Not just where all the pubs he's been seen in are located in real life, but showing the fictional topology. It would probably need at least three dimensions and/or some little asterisks to mark wormholes.

I would be very surprised if some enterprising type hadn’t already created something of the kind. I believe such an item was developed around Rebus’ Edinburgh.

[Simon G]

That must have stuck in your memory, Guy. Somerton Park was demolished in 1993.

That's because it was Meadow Park in Gloucester, and not Somerton Park. Was in the Gloucester Citizen for a good few days when they filmed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHWjzRv3j8M

EDIT: Looking at that video, they actually used more than the ground. The kit was Gloucester's kit at the time as well.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I have a recollection that in at least one of the editions of Colin Dexter's Morse novels, someone (the author himself)? had included a handdrawn map of the principal locations as a prefix, to help the reader understand where Jericho and Woodstock Road were (as the geograhy played a crucial part in the plot).

[ursus arctos]

I thought I had seen something like that too, but all I can find are maps for walking tours and the like, like this one



Though there is also an entire book

[Patrick Thistle]

That's because it was Meadow Park in Gloucester, and not Somerton Park. Was in the Gloucester Citizen for a good few days when they filmed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHWjzRv3j8M

EDIT: Looking at that video, they actually used more than the ground. The kit was Gloucester's kit at the time as well.

I think you're both right. I think they used Somerton in about 1992 and Gloucester City on a later occasion.

[Giggler]

I think you're both right. I think they used Somerton in about 1992 and Gloucester City on a later occasion.

I remember a Football Night on the BBC in about 1998 (not Goal TV, which Seb Patrick uploaded to YouTube, which went out in 1994) which had a Bob Mills clip show on it, sort of like In Bed With Medinner but all about football. I think it showed some of this episode of Casualty. Holby City were playing Selwood.

[San Bernardhinault]

I thought I had seen something like that too, but all I can find are maps for walking tours and the like, like this one

The fact that Summertown is in the wrong place on this map is more annoying than most film-geography errors.

[Guy Profumo]

I think you're both right. I think they used Somerton in about 1992 and Gloucester City on a later occasion.

Indeed. As PT has rightly pointed out, the crowd scene was filmed at Somerton Park, and not at Gloucester City

[Simon G]

More than happy to have been corrected.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think they used both locations for different episodes Guy Profumo

Casualty has been going 35 years. They've had time for 2 football storylines.

[Sits]

I know it was only Thunderbirds but there was a geographical plot point which irked me even in my teens when I watched a repeat. Some mystery individual was arranging a secret meeting with Lady Penelope*. He said “Drive to the New Forest, then go to the clearing.” As anyone who’s been will know, the New Forest is bloody massive, and probably has more clearings than trees. More gorse etc. bushes than either, mind.

*Not that it would be especially secret with Parker driving, m’lady.

[Nocturnal Submission]

There was an episode of Citizen Smith in which one of the characters talked about having been chased by somebody or other and "thrown into the pond on Figges Marsh." Now, Figges Marsh doesn't have a pond, but the fact that my local park was mentioned on national TV was one of the highlights of my childhood.

Would have been a lengthy chase from the middle of Tooting, as well, given that it was in the next town.

[Guy Profumo]

I think they used both locations for different episodes Guy Profumo

Casualty has been going 35 years. They've had time for 2 football storylines.

No no no

I am talking about one and only one specific episode

I am right

Everybody disagreeing with me is wrong


Me me me me me

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Famously Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman walked from Dover to Loxley via Hadrian's Wall in a day

Similarly in Tommy, Roger Daltrey puts in a big shift to flee from the mob on the coast in Hampshire and end up in (Ken Russell's beloved) Borrowdale in the Lake District.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I might be mis-remembering but I think at least one of the Casualty football episodes featured sets of fans in (pre comeback) bobble hats, bar scarves and rosettes having a punch up with each other, in what was a quaint portrayal of football at the time.

[Muukalainen]

Varjakka is a small village across Kempeleenlahti (Kempele Bay) from Oulu. It consists of little more than a few dozen houses and a small marina, and is so small that most people round here don't know where it is. For the plot of the TV programme Kaikki synnit, however, it has somehow sprouted the facilities of a sizeable town, notably a police station, school, a swimming pool (looking suspiciously like the one in Raatti), a church (I'm not sure, but it might be the one in Liminka), factories, etc, none of which exist in Varjakka itself. It would be interesting to find out how much of the programme is actually filmed in Varjakka.

[Hot Orange]

The plausibility of the bike ride undertaken by the young fella in The Dig, and of the amount of time it apparently took him, is the subject of some ridicule round these parts.

[jwdd27]

Late night re-runs of A Touch of Frost on ITV3 are a nice reminder of "my" Leeds of the early 90s, although Denton also resembles at various times the Wakefield and Harrogate of that time, depending on the atmosphere they were trying to create.

[tee rex]

I might be mis-remembering but I think at least one of the Casualty football episodes featured sets of fans in (pre comeback) bobble hats, bar scarves and rosettes having a punch up with each other, in what was a quaint portrayal of football at the time.

I'd trust your memory on that. Various football accessories have featured on screen long after they had become rarer sights off it. Perhaps it's because a replica shirt is too specific, or just too much trouble for the props department. If the fictional team is West Park United, a generic red scarf and rosette will have to do, the budget doesn't extend to designing a new kit and sponsor.

[ad hoc]

The Cider House Rules was filmed less than a mile down a track from where I went to grad school and subsequently worked in Vermont - we'd see the film crew every day. At one point in the film Tobey Maguire and Charlize Theron set off by bike from the orchard and go to the Maine coast for the day, a distance of about 150 miles.

(Though I'm not sure if this counts, because while it was filmed in Vermont, think it was supposed to be Maine)

[Sam]

According to this Big Book of US States ursus and scratchmonkey have got me consulting tonight, Vermont is landlocked, so you've jumped into first place in the thread if it does turn out to be set there.

[Sam]

(I realise that Vermont being landlocked isn't going to come as a surprise to you by the way.)

[Giggler]

There was an episode of Citizen Smith in which one of the characters talked about having been chased by somebody or other and "thrown into the pond on Figges Marsh." Now, Figges Marsh doesn't have a pond, but the fact that my local park was mentioned on national TV was one of the highlights of my childhood.

Would have been a lengthy chase from the middle of Tooting, as well, given that it was in the next town.

Ditto watching Porridge with my grandma and the afternoon when Fletch just wants Saturday afternoon to himself but Warren interrupts him. "I love you in those action-packed anecdotes of when you worked in your father-in-law's ironmongers shop in Bury," particularly because the only ironmonger's shop I actually knew in Bury was 500 yards from where we sitting as we watched it.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Ditto watching Porridge with my grandma and the afternoon when Fletch just wants Saturday afternoon to himself but Warren interrupts him. "I love you in those action-packed anecdotes of when you worked in your father-in-law's ironmongers shop in Bury," particularly because the only ironmonger's shop I actually knew in Bury was 500 yards from where we sitting as we watched it.

In the Christmas special Fletch is given a referral to "Carlisle General" as a ruse for the escape plot, which is where I was born (although in practice it was called "Carlisle City General"). I'm sure they also referred to "Carlisle Infirmary" in another episode (or it might have been in the cash-in books based on the scripts) , which can be taken as the Cumberland Infirmary which was little over the 500 yard mark for us (and still is).