Scarborough Fiction

  A critical and commercial success, Little Voice is perhaps the most well-known film to have been shot on location in Scarborough. Whilst the town's name is not used by the characters, and does not appear on any signage, there is significant use of the South Bay seafront and harbour area as well as a particular residential street, Barwick Terrace (off Gladstone Road). The closest the film comes to verbally acknowledging its setting is when showbiz agent, Ray Say (played by Michael Caine) mentions that he will be picking up a London-based talent scout from The Grand. Released in December 1998, with a 15 certificate, I was too young to go and see it at the time. I was certainly aware of its release though; I had seen the posters and I remember it being the talk of the town. I would have to wait for it to be broadcast on terrestrial television, which might have been around four or five years later. I can't remember now what I thought of it at the time, I imagine I was just impre...

  I used to think that a comedy series being filmed in Scarborough was very unlikely. I didn't think anyone would even suggest it. That's why, in 2012, I wrote my own sitcom script. It had the title Hawaiianesque and was set in a surf shop in Scarborough - I was picturing Cool Classics Surf Shop on Museum Terrace as I wrote it. In 2017, I wrote another script; Coasters was also set in Scarborough. The main characters worked in a gift shop and there were lots of outdoor scenes and some crime-based drama. Other than a few nice comments on the second script from an independent production company, nothing happened with those scripts.  It would take a writer with a lot of experience to get a prime time Scarborough sitcom on our screens. Derren Litten had huge success with the ITV comedy, Benidorm . It ran for ten series and attracted millions of viewers - according to the Wikipedia entry , series 4 and 5 attracted an average of over 7 million across all episodes. It made sense fo...