WARRINGTON is a town with a variety of buildings and backdrops which make it attractive backdrop for TV, film and advertising bosses when picking a location for their actors or models.
The historic Walton Hall and Gardens, south of the town, was transformed into 1930s Chester Zoo for Our Zoo, a 2014 BBC biopic which told the history of the popular zoo.
First established by George Mottershead, he had noticed a manor house up for auction and decided to turn it into a zoo housing exotic creatures from around the globe.
And the team from Most Haunted with Yvette Fielding picked the historic site for a programme back in series 18. The area was also the backdrop for the late Viola Beach music video called Boys That Sing.
More recently, the majestic Treasury building in the heart of the Cultural Quarter was used to film an advert for the former catalogue brand turned digital retailer, Freemans.
Murder on the Dance Floor singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor was announced last month as the face of the company’s Autumn Winter 2024 campaign.
The advert was shot on location at the Treasury, now restaurants and bars, along with locations in Stockport and the Trafford Centre.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor pictured entering the Treasury Building
The film is reportedly set in the 1980s and will see Bean, who was in Lord of the Rings, play an ex-soldier.
The duo were also spotted filming in Manchester on a motorcycle.
Back in Warrington, film crews were seen outside a house in Pickering Crescent in Thelwall. In a statement to journalists, Focus Features and Plan B announced they were partnering with Day-Lewis’s son Ronan, for his debut film. It also stars Samantha Morton, who was in Band of Gold.
Anemone “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers and the dynamics of familial bonds.”
But when the actors were filming in Chester, they were ticketed by traffic wardens after vehicles were pparked on double yellow lines.
Earlier this year, residents in Orford were astonished when Sky One film crews turned up to take over a street to film the sixth series of the popular (and hilarious) Brassic.
Eagle-eyed fans noticed Joseph Gilgun, who plays Vinnie in the series, out and about.
Former Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, who was a mainstay of the 1990s Madchester dance scene, was seen at the Hive in Cairo Street back in May, along with dancer Bez. The pair were filming a new gangster movie, called Geezers.
Local lad Johnny Wilson from Culcheth was cast in this exciting production from Ciaron Davies and starring a huge international cast including Shaun Ryder and Bez from the Happy Mondays.
Warrington has also featured as a location in the Cbeebies programme, Biff and Chip, which aired three years ago.
And in 2015, the Disney series The Evermoore Chronicles, produced by Lime Pictures who make Hollyoaks, was filmed in Woolston. It followed teenager Tara Bailey, who moved from the US to the fictional Evermoore in England and as she arrives in her new home, she’s embroiled in a mystery.
The series ran for 20 episodes. Exterior scenes were also used at Arley Hall, near Northwich.
BBC drama Ordinary Lies, following the lives of a group of colleagues in a fictional motor showroom, was filmed at Warrington Collegiate, a car dealership in Orford Lane and at The Orford Hotel, in 2015.
It starred comedian and presenter Jason Manford, as salesman Marty, and popular actresses Michelle Keegan and Sally Lindsay as colleagues.
Ordinary Lies told the story of the group of friends and colleagues who keep secrets from each other. Everything changes after their lies are eventually exposed. It was described by critics as “intense, dark and engaging.”
