All Your Favorite British TV Shows, Mapped

Oh, so that’s where the U.K. version of The Office takes place! Can you find the location of your favourite Brit show?

Fawlty Towers is set in Torquay. The Office, in Slough; Downton Abbey in North Yorkshire.

If you’re a British TV enthusiast, you’d know the name of the town where your favorite show is set. But could you pick it out on a map?
Unlikely.
While settling in to an episode of Foyle’s War, designer Tim Ritz’s wife asked him to show her where, exactly, Hastings was. He drew a map of the U.K. on a sticky note, with a dot on the East Sussex village.
But he didn’t stop there. He added a dot for Downton Abbey, and another in Derbyshire for Pride & Prejudice, and ended up with the first draft for what would become The Great British Television Map.
“All of our friends and families have been getting into British TV more and more over the years,” he tells CityLab. But as an American, he realized that Americans’ (as he puts it) notoriously “feeble grasp on international geography” might be getting in the way of completely understanding the shows.
The Great British Television Map (h/t: The Great British Bake Off) attempts to remedy that. Though by no means comprehensive, Ritz’s design presents a geography of the U.K.’s airwaves. In plotting the locations, Ritz says he took a cue from vintage London Underground maps. Color-coded dots correspond to the original broadcast network.
“Layer upon layer of cultural understandings underpin the television we watch,” Ritz says. When American viewers watch American TV, he adds, they “inherently understand references to everything from snack brands to the history of certain places.” But foreign viewers may not, and likewise, “British geography is one of those layers of reference in British TV” that may elude American viewers, Ritz says.
In compiling the map, Ritz says he expected more shows to follow the Downton Abbey strategy of setting the show in one location (Yorkshire, in northern England) and filming it in another (Highclere Castle, in West Berkshire, where it’s sunnier). But he was surprised to find that most shows were filmed on or close to their intended settings. London, unsurprisingly, was the most daunting to account for—Ritz’s map accommodates it in a large inset, and “even then it was bursting at the seams to contain all the series in there,” he says.
Since launching the map, Ritz has gotten some comments (and a few outright complaints) about missing shows, but he’s taking them in stride. He’s looking into overhauling the design to accommodate more programs in an updated edition, and he’s considering taking on continental Europe and North America, as well.

Anne of Green Gables: 5 reasons her story is still relevant today

P.E.I. icon transcends generations, continues to take on role as literary hero.

CBC News Posted: Feb 11, 2016 7:00 PM AT Last Updated: Feb 11, 2016 7:00 PM AT

Ella Ballentine and Martin Sheen will star in the upcoming 2-hour YTV film Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Of Green Gables. (Ken Woroner)

P.E.I.'s most famous redhead will be back on TV screens next week, when YTV's new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables premiers. It's been 108 years since L.M. Montgomery's book about Anne Shirley was first published, and the story continues to resonate with modern audiences — with many adaptations of the story for both stage and screen. "I think the adaptations really keep Anne alive," said Laura Robinson, a visiting scholar at the L.M. Montgomery Institute. "We often think that it's just a simple little story, but there's a lot going on in the original Anne, so each adaptation draws on some element of the story and pulls it out." Maritime Noon opened its phone lines asking listeners why Anne of Green Gables has been an enduring story to them. 1. She's an underdog "She is an outsider who gains acceptance from her community and that's a really compelling story," said Robinson. "I think when we see the orphan who gets adopted, finds a home and triumphs in that community, there's a very happy message there for all of us." Brenda Gallant, the marketing director of Tourism PEI, said Anne is as relatable a character today as she was in 1908. "What young girls are dealing with — self-confidence, the fact that she's so adventurous and fun loving — it's all things that we can relate with," she said. 2. She's a feminist CBC reporter Colleen Jones mentions Anne of Green Gables as a role model in her recent memoir. "Me, being a child of the 60s, those kids of female role models weren't there," she said. "She didn't need Gilbert [Blythe]. She was willing to help Matthew [Cuthbert]. She was willing to do boys' role jobs, and that spoke to me big time as a young teenager." "It's arguably the first and greatest Canadian feminist novel," said Campbell Webster, producer of Anne & Gilbert: The Musical. "To make this bold, bold statement — really a feminist statement — is something that continues to need to be heard." 3. She's a hero "She's one of very few Maritime heroes," said Craig Hubley, from Le Havre, N.S. Hubley said Anne's narrative shares a lot of threads with other hero stories. "Think about this — Superman and Batman are both orphans, Wonder Woman comes from an idyllic Island ruled only by women." 4. She connects generations "I think the reason why Anne sticks around is because of the people in your life who introduce you to Anne," said Allie Breen, from Halifax. Breen received a copy of the book from her grandmother when she was 10, and told her a story about how her teacher used to read them a little bit of Anne's story every Friday afternoon. "I just imagined her in a little school house and then me in my bedroom so many years later — 90 years later — reading Anne." 5. She's a P.E.I. icon "When I first met my husband … he asked me if there was one place I could go where would it be and I said Prince Edward Isle," said Heather Paquette, a longtime Anne fan who now lives in Yarmouth, N.S., but is originally from the U.S. Paquette made it to P.E.I. for her honeymoon. Gallant said people from around the world make Anne-inspired visits. "Many people save up for many years for their trip of a lifetime to come to Prince Edward Island," she said. "As much as we would like to say everybody around the world knows [P.E.I.], they don't. But yet, when you say Anne of Green Gables, they link it completely and now they know who we are."