ITV have started the long

awaited 2009 filming of the first of eight new Agatha Christie films for television, four are to be Miss Marple, and four are to be Poirot. Rumour has it that the ITV Drama staring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, set during the 1930’s, is being filmed on the Orient Express, and at a various number of different locations.

One poor Papparzzi photographer spent the day in Dover trying to find the set, and only arrived back in London to catch the final 20 minutes of the final scene, I laughed quietly on set.

One of theses locations is also where the BBC drama Fanny Hill was filmed in 2007, and that’s right here in Dukes Road & Woburn Walk, with a one day shoot.

The Locations and Sets teams have been busy for the last few days dressing the set, taking our Dickensian shopping street back to how it would have looked in the 1930’s.

They have done a sterling job, not just on the outside streets and facades, but also on the interior of many of the shops changing Camden’s empty ‘To-Let shop’ into a fantastic early photographic camera emporium.

A nice 1940’s red phone box has also arrived on set – not knowing the years of trouble we local residents have had to put up with the phone boxes in Kings Cross, this one has no ‘ladies calling cards’ or ‘drug paraphernalia’  in it (as of yet) just two buttons A & B, and it smells very fresh & clean!

Local residents, most of who live in either Dukes road & Woburn Walk, spent a lot of the morning watching from ‘behind the camera’ enjoying the excitement of being on a TV drama film set, on hot and Sunny Sunday in June.

There is little else to do when the TV machine takes over your neighbourhood, so you would think that they wouldn’t have a problem with local residents (and a few passing tourists) taking pictures?

Apparently not, the production crew instructed their set security to tell local residents, that they had had their picture and now to stop and go away, leave us alone.  Too where do we go, I might ask?

We live here, this is our street, it doesn’t  take a Belgium detective to work that one out. Surely actors are used to being in front of a lens, and being photographed by the people who watch their programme.

I’m a member of the  Broadcast Union BECTU who have a code conduct for all members, and am a freelance photographer, so I have a good undertanding of my rights when taking images, it’s what I do.  I  aways do my best to behave as if I’m working it’s the professional in me, even when I’m just taking snaps for the TA website, but I felt that the brusk treatment of my fellow neighbours was a little rich to say the least, certainly not called for.

Everyone has a right to take photographs in a public place, not just ITV Drama or Poirot.

The day turned out to be a real treat for us locals, everyone had fun even some of the actors and crew cracked the odd smile, I’m now lookin forward to seeing the finished film on TV.

Simon Lamrock
Chair
Somerton House TA

Four brand new Poirot films on an independent television station near you soon (TV licence  required).