By Steve Stratford, Deputy Editor
There I was on Saturday night, watching the much-heralded Doctor Who finale on BBC1, apparently along with 10 million others.
The new look Doctor Who is one of the BBC's modern success stories and a real feather in the cap for BBC Wales at Cardiff. Before Russell T Davies stalked the corridors at Llandaff, BBC Wales was largely known for productions which very rarely got shown outside the Principality (Pobol-y-Cwm, Belonging), but now it is one of the UK's major TV production centres, responsible not only for Doctor Who, but its spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, Casanova, Life on Mars, This Life+10 and Ashes to Ashes.
And it's great that the success of Doctor Who and Torchwood has put an international spotlight on Wales, both for tourists and film-makers alike. Before American and European audiences started seeing "Made by BBC Wales" at the end of Doctor Who and Torchwood, many foreign TV viewers probably thought Wales was a county in England, or maybe hadn't heard of it at all!
Much of the Doctor Who made since 2005 has been filmed on location in South Wales, principally Cardiff and Swansea, but what I'd like to see is the focus widen to include North Wales. Why not bring the production crew up to North Wales to film some of the Doctor's adventures? We've got quarries, mountains, lakes, coastlines, scrubland, magnificent views, caves, mines, rolling beaches, an Italianate village, historic country houses, ancient castles - heck, we've even got an abandoned ship and a giant foot! I'm sure the Doctor Who team can write a story to include that!
But seriously, it would be nice for North Wales to get a look-in because we do have so much to offer production companies and film-makers. The sad thing is that it's undoubtedly easier and cheaper to get the TARDIS from Cardiff to almost anywhere in Mid and Southern England than it is to get it up here. It's that old problem of the North/ South divide - this time geography gets in the way!
Ah well, perhaps now Doctor Who is getting a new supremo in the form of Scotsman Steven Moffat North Wales will get the opportunity to showcase its wares when they start filming the fifth series next summer. It'd be great to see a giant foot on Doctor Who - they had the Face of Boe, so why not the Foot of Boe?!
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Ifan Cope wrote...
Because North Wales is grim and not much fun and rains and is cold and basically shit. I live here and am going to move out as soon as I can because I hate it so much.
Posted by: Ifan Cope | July 7, 2008 4:16 PM