Wes Anderson may have been spotted looking for places to film in town lately but, as out unlikely locations correspondent Angus Young finds, he’s far from the first director to seek odd spots in Hull.
Far be it from us here at Curiosity Towers to be picky but we think the Hullywood Walking Trail is missing a trick. For those unfamiliar with it, the official trail takes participants around various locations in Hull used in TV and films. Available online and in printed form, it includes familiar spots in the city centre used for scenes in the likes of Victoria, Enola Holmes 2 and The Personal History of David Copperfield. However, there’s one location missing – a bus stop in Bransholme.
Back in 1990 it wasn’t a stopping place for buses. Instead, it was a roundabout on Kesteven Road. It was also the location for the filming of a now largely-forgotten hour-long drama screened on Channel 4 the following year starring Alexei Sayle, the late Stratford Johns and a very young Johnny Lee Miller. The play was part of the channel’s ‘4 Play’ series of original dramas which kicked off with Chains of Love, the story of an all-girl sex toy party written by Hull Truck founder Mike Bradwell and starring Cleethorpes-born actress Julie Peasgood.
Luckily for fans of surreal, bleak and largely incomprehensible TV, the Bransholme-set play co-written by Sayle and David Stafford is still available to watch in full on YouTube. ‘Itch’ tells the tale of a semi-mute hitch hiker (Sayle) trying to get to Colchester who finds himself marooned on a roundabout on the edge of an unidentified run-down town (Bransholme) unable to persuade anyone to give him a lift. Across the road lives a family (including Miller) who sometimes visit their local pub (run by Johns) to mull over their impending eviction by a development corporation planning to build a vast new upmarket housing estate, retail park and a marina on the surrounding open countryside. “Do you know much about the Yukon during the Gold Rush up there in Alaska? “says Millar’s father with a sigh. “Well, it will be like round here, only a bit warmer.”
Sayle’s hitch hiker spends the next year living on the roundabout amid a landscape of abandoned cars, dumped sofas and upturned dustbins. Eventually, he joins forces with the family to turn their grim surroundings into something more colourful. There are also some local cameos, including a Willingham’s breakdown lorry and a fleet of Dennis Taylor rental vans.
The storyline, such as it is, veers from the bizarre to the ridiculous. In one scene, one of the corporation’s executives is flattened and killed by a goat dropped from a helicopter. However, apart from the goat, the play actually mirrors what was looming on the horizon in real life in that particular neck of the woods.
Within a few years, the open fields beyond Kesteven Way would be re-developed as Kingswood in much the same way as the proposed new town being mapped out in the play. As such, watching it 35 years on provides a fascinating glimpse of a world which has largely disappeared except for the row of council houses where Millar’s family lived. As for the roundabout, it’s been removed and replaced with a layby and a bus stop. [Alexie Sayle has returned to Hull several times since and likes our egg custards. Fact – Ed,)
‘Itch’ might not have the appeal of a Victorian costume drama and there’s far too much of Sayle’s self-indulgent nonsense on display but the play is Bransholme’s big claim to TV and film fame and, as such, should be celebrated as such. Get those Hullywood walking Trail leaflets back to the printers pronto!
Angus Young