The 10 best ...CultureWith JK Rowling’s fictional Pagford about to appear on BBC1, Michael Hogan chooses his favourite screen villages, from disturbing Midwich to romantic Ballykissangel.
Nominate your favourite village in the comments below and it could be featured in the alternative list next week.
Pagford
The Casual Vacancy (2015)
The setting for JK Rowling’s first non-Potter novel is pretty Pagford: a tranquil West Country village, complete with cobbled square and 12th-century abbey. Any resemblance to Rowling’s home town of Yate in Gloucestershire is, we are sure, entirely coincidental. When death frees up a seat on the parish council, factions form, in-fighting erupts and secrets bubble to the surface. BBC1’s blackly comic three-part adaptation (starting 15 February) finds Rowling reunited with Dumbledore actor Michael Gambon, who plays adulterous deli owner Howard Mollison. The starry cast also includes Julia McKenzie, Keeley Hawes and Rory Kinnear.
Midwich
Village of the Damned (1960)
In John Wyndham’s 1957 sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos, the fictional British village of Midwich in Winshire is the scene of an alien invasion that leaves the female population pregnant. They give birth to an army of children with glowing eyes, white-blond hair and dangerous telekinetic abilities. It was filmed in 1960 as creepy horror Village of the Damned (tagline: “Beware the stare that will paralyse the will of the world”), with Hertfordshire’s Letchmore Heath, where pretty houses are clustered around the village pond, standing in for spooky Midwich. John Carpenter’s inferior 1995 remake relocated the scares to California.
Downton
Downton Abbey (2010-)
It’s not seen every week in posh period soap Downton Abbey – events upstairs and downstairs at the Crawley family seat tend to be more interesting – but a few times per series, there’s a scene set in the nearby North Yorkshire village: home to a post office, shop, church, two pubs (The Dog & Duck and The Grantham Arms, which has lodgings upstairs), Jubilee Dance Hall (working-class scandal happens here), railway station (cue emotional farewells) and Dr Clarkson’s cottage hospital. Fictional Downton is located between Ripon and Thirsk, but exterior village scenes are actually filmed 200 miles south in Bampton, Oxfordshire.
Covington
The Village (2004)
M Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller portrayed an isolated, ye olde Pennsylvania village called Covington, comprising stone cottages, a church and a school. The cloak-clad, wool-weaving population lived in constant fear of nameless monsters in the surrounding woods (“those we don’t speak of”), hence the oil lanterns and watchtowers around the village perimeter. A combination of curiosity and need for medical supplies, however, drove youngsters Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard to venture through the forest to “the towns”, described by village elders as “wicked places where wicked people live”. Trademark Shyamalan twists ensued, sadly, not entirely satisfactorily.
Bramley End
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Adapted from a Graham Greene short story, Went the Day Well? was a subtly subversive Ealing Studios propaganda film about an English village that is taken over by German paratroopers disguised as British soldiers. Intended to form the vanguard of a Nazi invasion, they’re initially welcomed but plucky locals rumble them, raise the alarm and help defeat them. As one proud villager says over the closing shot of the Germans’ grave in Bramley End churchyard: “This is the only bit of England they got.” The film features Thora Hird’s first major role and was shot in Turville, Buckinghamshire, later the location for The Vicar of Dibley.
Dibley
The Vicar of Dibley (1994-2013)
“I know, you were expecting a bloke with bad breath and a Bible. Instead, you got a babe with a bob cut and a magnificent bosom.” When the Church Of England introduced ordination of women in 1992, it took Richard Curtis just two years to get a sitcom on to BBC1 based on it. The Vicar of Dibley saw female priest Geraldine Granger (Dawn French) arrive in a fictional Oxfordshire village, shock the residents but gradually win them round. St Mary the Virgin Church in Turville doubled as Dibley’s St Barnabus and characters lived in quaint cottages, except for snooty David Horton’s grand Dibley Manor.
Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel (1996-2001)
At its late-90s peak, this Sunday night BBC1 hit about an English priest in “back of beyond” Ireland attracted ratings of 10m, gripped by the romantic chemistry between Father Peter Clifford (Stephen Tompkinson) and pub landlady Assumpta Fitzgerald (Dervla Kirwan). All white cottages, luscious green fields and winding lanes, the village’s name means “town of the fallen angel” and was derived from Ballykissane in Co Kerry, where creator Kieran Prendiville holidayed in childhood, although the show was actually filmed in Avoca, Co Wicklow on the opposite coast. The two popular leads left after three series but the show limped on for three more, quality and ratings sliding steadily downhill.
St Mary Mead
The Murder at the Vicarage (1986)
“We’re all very ordinary in St Mary Mead but ordinary people can sometimes do the most astonishing things.” The idyllic setting for Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple novel, 1930’s The Murder at the Vicarage, St Mary Mead was where the elderly spinster learned her sleuthing trade. In those thatched cottages, Victorian piles, village shops and the Blue Boar pub, Jane Marple had seen all sides of human nature and serious crimes invariably remind her of a parallel incident back home. The 80s BBC adaptations, starring bird-like Joan Hickson, were filmed in Nether Wallop, Hampshire.
Sandford
Hot Fuzz (2007)
“Wanna be a big cop in a small town? Fuck off up the model village.” In cop-com Hot Fuzz, hotshot PC Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is making his Met colleagues look bad, so gets transferred to sleepy Sandford, where they’re more interested in am-dram, hanging baskets and winning the best kept village award than tackling crime. Drink-driving and underage boozing are de rigueur but Angel also uncovers a murderous conspiracy involving most of the locals. Pitched as “Lethal Weapon in the West Country”, it was shot in director Edgar Wright’s hometown of Wells, Somerset. Sandford is named after a generic town in police training role-play scenarios.
The Village
The Prisoner (1967-68)
“I am not a number, I am a free man.” The escape-proof setting of cult series The Prisoner, where Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six was held along with fellow former spies, was all Italianate architecture, penny farthing signage and all-seeing surveillance, patrolled by balloon-like security device Rover. Clues suggested its fictional location was Morocco or Lithuania, although later episodes indicated it was closer to home in Kent. It was filmed in Welsh resort Portmeirion, which still hosts annual fan conventions. In the flop 2009 remake, The Village was relocated to the Namibian desert. Director Christopher Nolan is considering a film version. “Be seeing you.”
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