Filming in North Somerset

About six years ago North Somerset signed up with South West Screen (regional film agency) to become an accredited "film friendly" local authority.

The Cafe film shoot

This involved one-to-one mentoring and a training day run by Bath film office for relevant officers in the council (including tourism, highways, environmental health, health and safety, press office ). North Somerset Council is listed on the South West Screen website as an accredited authority and the site also has an image library which includes North Somerset locations.

We attract a wide variety of filming from nature programmes to reality TV series (including Hotel Inspector, Come Dine with Me, Embarrassing Bodies, Groundforce). Feature films, filmed in the district include Never Let Me Go, starring Kiera Knightly and Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins. We've also had Only Fools and Horses, and were used regularly by the BBC Casualty crew when they were based in Bristol. We help budding film makers by hosting students who want to film their exam pieces in North Somerset.

In the summer of 2011 the seaside resort Weston-super-Mare became the star of a new Sky 1 sitcom, the Café – written by, and starring, Ralf Little of the Royle Family and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps fame, and Olivier Award-winning screenwriter Michelle Terry. The series was directed by Craig Cash (Dave the son-in-law from the Royle Family).

2011 proved to be a bumper year for us, as well as the Café, the T4 on the Beach music festival returned to Weston for its 7th year, with an audience of 45,000 filmed live for C4 in July. In the summer Weston featured in 2 new BBC drama series shoots, “Public Enemies”, and “Inside Men”, ITV’s This Morning, C5’s Paul Merton’s Great Escapes and the Gadget Show, to name a few.

We recognise the economic benefits of film crews using North Somerset and wherever possible encourage them to use local businesses and support the local economy (e.g. accommodation providers, catering supplies, builders' merchants, security services, restaurants, cafes and car parks). We also hope to benefit from the growing market for “film tourism”.