Lights, Camera, West Country: where your favourite shows were really filmed

There is something about the West Country that film-makers simply cannot resist. Perhaps it is the quality of the light as it falls across a tin-streaked clifftop, or the way a narrow harbour village folds itself so naturally around a story. Whatever the reason, Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset and Devon have served as backdrops for some of the most-loved productions in British television and film history, often playing places they are not, and doing so convincingly enough to send millions of viewers reaching for a road atlas.

Doc Martin - Port Isaac, Cornwall

For eighteen years, the fictional village of Portwenn was home to television's most exasperated GP. In reality, it has always been Port Isaac, a medieval fishing village on Cornwall's rugged north coast, with cobbled lanes so narrow that they were historically designed to deter pirate raids.

The show aired between 2004 and 2022 across ten series, with the final Christmas special bringing the story to a close after 79 episodes. The name Portwenn is not entirely invented. It was the historic name for the nearby cove of Port Quin.

The village's most recognisable landmark is Fern Cottage, the building that served as Dr Ellingham's residence and medical practice, offering views over the village and the natural harbour. Most interior scenes were shot at Roscarrock Manor Farm on the outskirts of Port Isaac, which served as the main set.

The wider parish featured throughout. The 12th-century St Nonna's Church in Altarnun, known as the Cathedral of the Moor, was used for both Doc Martin's ill-fated first wedding attempt and, eventually, his marriage to Louisa. Doyden's Castle, dramatically positioned on the cliffs at Port Quin just around the headland, appeared in series five and is today available to rent as a National Trust holiday let. Other locations included Pencarrow House in Bodmin for Doc Martin and Louisa's first date, the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for all hospital scenes, and The Old Inn at St Breward for the birth of their son James Henry.

The show's effect on tourism has been considerable. Port Isaac was once a quiet fishing village and since the arrival of Doc Martin in 2004, its revenue has come mostly from tourism. On busy summer days the village's tiny streets fill with visitors clutching maps to the surgery.

Poldark - Across Cornwall

If Doc Martin gave the world Port Isaac, then Poldark gave it almost everywhere else. The BBC's sweeping adaptation of Winston Graham's novels, broadcast first in 1975 then revived to huge audiences from 2015 to 2019, required Cornwall to stand in for an entire 18th-century world of mines, harbours, moorland estates and windswept beaches. It managed this without much difficulty.

The abandoned buildings at Botallack provided the stand-in for the Poldark family mines, including Wheal Leisure, Grambler and Wheal Grace. Levant Mine, near St Just on the north Cornish coast, doubled as Tressider's Rolling Mill and houses the only working Cornish beam engine in the world, a steam-powered machine from the 1840s restored by a band of volunteers known as the Greasy Gang after sixty years of disuse.

For harbour scenes throughout all five series, the production returned repeatedly to Charlestown, near St Austell. The Grade II listed Georgian port, with its long granite quays and fleet of tall sailing ships, served as Truro, Falmouth and various other ports, and had done the same in the 1970s series. Production designer Jeff Tessler called it his favourite location, noting it is the only place in the country where you can see tall ships in a setting that has hardly changed since the 18th century.

The beach at Porthcurno, with its white shell sand and turquoise water, appeared as Nampara Cove, the Poldark family beach. Kynance Cove on the Lizard opened series two with aerial clifftop riding scenes. The high heathland of St Agnes Head doubled as Nampara Valley. And Nampara itself, Ross's home, was assembled from several pieces: a farmhouse exterior on Bodmin Moor, interior sets at the Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol, and additional exterior shots elsewhere.

Broadchurch - West Bay, Dorset

When ITV wanted a setting for a crime drama about grief, community and coastal isolation, they turned to the Jurassic Coast. The fictional town of Broadchurch was brought to life primarily at West Bay, near Bridport in West Dorset. Sites used include West Bay Harbour, East Cliff, Eype and Freshwater. The towering golden sandstone cliffs that frame so many of the drama's most haunting scenes became instantly recognisable to British audiences and introduced Dorset's coastline to a generation of viewers who had never been there.

Writer Chris Chibnall described the landscape as a love letter to the Jurassic Coast. The show ran for three series, with an official location trail now connecting the various sites. Not everything set in Broadchurch was filmed in Dorset though. Several scenes were shot in and around Clevedon in Somerset, including St Andrew's Church, which served as the Broadchurch parish church and graveyard.

Hot Fuzz - Wells, Somerset

Edgar Wright's 2007 action comedy transplanted the energy of a Hollywood buddy-cop movie to the quiet streets of England's smallest city. The fictional Sandford was, in reality, Wells in Somerset, a medieval cathedral city of barely 12,000 people and Wright's hometown.

Principal photography took place in Wells for eleven weeks. Wells Cathedral was digitally removed from every shot, as Wright wanted the Church of St Cuthbert to be the dominant landmark of his fictional town. The film's most recognisable settings are all still there to visit. Market Place served as Sandford's central square. The Crown pub is where Angel first encounters Danny Butterman. The Bishop's Palace hosted the sinister NWA meetings. And St Cuthbert's Church was the site of the memorable falling steeple scene.

While shooting in uniform, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were frequently mistaken for real police officers and asked for directions by passers-by. The cast held their premiere party at The Crown the night the film was released, and photographs from the evening are still on display inside. Wright has said of Wells that he loves it but also wants to trash it, a sentiment that captures something true about the relationship between a film-maker and their hometown.

The Salt Path - Somerset and the South West Coast Path

The Salt Path takes a different approach to West Country storytelling. Based on Raynor Winn's bestselling memoir about walking the South West Coast Path with her husband Moth after losing their home, the 2025 film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs used the real landscape of the path as its backdrop, shooting along stretches of the Somerset and Dorset coastline. Where most productions use the West Country as a stand-in for somewhere else, The Salt Path plants its feet firmly in the actual place. The rugged cliffs, the long exposed headlands and the grey winter light are not dressing for a fictional world but the point of the whole thing. It may be the most honest portrait of this coastline that any film has yet managed.

Others worth noting

• Far From the Madding Crowd (2015) - filmed at Sherborne and Mapperton House near Beaminster, Dorset.

• Dunkirk (2017) - Weymouth Harbour and the Swanage Railway both featured in Christopher Nolan's wartime epic.

• Ammonite (2020) - this story of palaeontologist Mary Anning filmed on Broad Street and the Cobb in Lyme Regis, with beach scenes at Charmouth and Eype.

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) - a Warner Bros team descended on Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset to film night-time scenes of the Weasley family home being attacked. The vast reed beds provided a flat, dramatic landscape around the digitally added Burrow.

• Wolf Hall (2015) - Montacute House in Somerset and Sherborne School in Dorset served as Tudor locations.

• Les Misérables (2012) - Pulteney Bridge in Bath stood in for the River Seine in Javert's final scene. Look for the tell-tale weir.

• Persuasion (1995) - the BBC adaptation used Lyme Regis and Bath, both of which feature in Austen's original novel.

The West Country's appeal to location managers is easy enough to understand. It offers variety, from ancient harbours and wild moorland to Georgian crescents and Jurassic cliffs, all within a relatively compact area. It offers light that changes by the hour. And it offers, above all, a kind of texture, a visible sense that the land has been lived in for a long time. That texture, more than any particular building or beach, is probably why the cameras keep coming back.