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Thursday, 15 October 2015

London filming starts soon on SS-GB ... with a surprise for residents

The Holly Lodge Estate, near the Highgate Cemetery
Very interesting little story in today's Evening Standard, here.

The good burghers of Highgate, with the famous cemetery, are warned about waking up and walking around their neighbourhood next week and being confronted by Nazi stormtroopers and guards. This is to do with planned filming of a number of scenes from the book. Not immediately clear which ones.

The article refers to an effortlessly polite note to local residents from the production company working for the BBC, which states: "There will be actors dressed in German Army, SS and Russian military uniform, some will be armed – please do not be alarmed." Quite.

Unlike the Game, Set & Match ennealogy, which is still sitting in pre-production with Clerkenwell Films, who've shed very little light on what's happening, at least this is evidence that when the BBC says we'll get SS-GB in 2016, that's likely to be the case.
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3 comments:

  1. Terry Kidd17 October 2015 at 06:55

    It looks like there will be a little competition...
    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/man-high-castle-creator-frank-812732

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  2. cameron duncan26 October 2015 at 23:31

    Thanks for the link Terry, sounds like a very expansive alternate history scenario. Cast including the eminently watchable Rufus Sewell should make for good viewing however.
    I hope the characters in the SS-GB production receive treatment true to Len's. The tension he generates from the intimacy between characters is what makes the book so compelling and the alternate history questions so threatening.

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  3. Terry Kidd27 October 2015 at 18:20

    It would be hard to find two authors less alike than Len Deighton and Philip K. Dick (despite being a lifelong SF fan I find Dick almost unreadable). However, he's the original source behind such as Bladerunner and Total Recall so I guess that works in Hollywood. Ridley Scott's involvment can't hurt either.

    However, SS-GB will always be for me the most plausible of the 'Hitler wins' alternate histories. And for the British viewer the notion of England under Nazi rule will I'm sure be a fascination. It may even play here in Germany, German's have a great love of 'crimies' and this may well tick many of the TV programme planning boxes.

    I hope it plays here. If it does I'll let you know how it goes down with the German viewers.

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