Town hall never far from drama
THE corridors of power at Manchester Town Hall have witnessed many dramas - both real and fictional.
From Peaky Blinders to Victor Frankenstein, the iconic building has been the backdrop for many a film and TV series.
It hosted the national count for the historic EU referendum and has seen a fair few political rows.
The grand entrance steps of the Neo-Gothic Victorian masterpiece saw poet Tony Walsh deliver an incredible performance of his piece This is the Place following the Arena bombing in May.
The town hall will close later this month for £250m restoration works. It will open again in 2024.
Admirers will soon be able to catch a glimpse of the building on screen during a BBC dramatisation of a political and sex scandal which rocked Westminster in the 1970s - and ended the career of the then leader of the Liberal Party Jeremy Thorpe.
Hugh Grant will star in A Very English Scandal, which will follow Thorpe’s relationship with Norman Scott, which ended with him being charged with three others of conspiracy to murder the former model.
Thorpe was eventually cleared of the allegations, but his political aspirations were dashed.
The programme is not the first to showcase Manchester’s stunning town hall, which has made a ready-made set for filmmakers.
The Grade I-listed building, designed by Alfred Waterhouse and constructed between 1868 and 1877, has a more than passing resemblance to the Palace of Westminster. It has a rich pedigree as a stand-in Houses of Parliament.
It featured prominently in the 2011 biographical drama, The Iron Lady, based on the life and career of Margaret Thatcher. The film earned Meryl Streep an Oscar.
In 1990 it become Westminster for the original TV version of House of Cards.
Programmes filmed at the building include the Birmingham gangster series Peaky Blinders, based in the 1920s, scenes of which were shot at the town hall.
Ripper Street, a Victorian crime drama set in London’s Whitechapel (2012), and the Crimson Petal and the White (2011), a drama set in 1870s London, were also filmed at the building.
The town hall’s central courtyard was transformed into a smog-filled busy 19th Century street for the film Victor Frankenstein (2015), Guy Ritchie’s version of Sherlock Holmes (2009) and The Limehouse Golem (2016) were all filmed there.