J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy" filming in Stroud area (Cotswolds)

[Pauline]

J.K. Rowling, author of the uber-successful Harry Potter books, wrote a non-Potter book about life in a Gloucestershire village. "The Casual Vacancy" is being made into a TV drama by BBC and HBO. I read the book when it first came out and liked it a lot. It could have been about my village, Painswick. Apparently it is about a nearby village where she lived before her Potter fame.

In the drama will be "actors Michael Gambon (Sleepy Hollow, Gosford Park), Keeley Hawes (The Avengers, The Bank Job), Rory Kinnear (Skyfall), Monica Dolan (Sightseers, Alan Partridge) and Julia McKenzie (Notes on a Scandal)."

A few scenes will be filmed in Painswick this summer (this was announced in our village monthly). A local friend reports that they were filming today in Bisley, a village north of Stroud.

Radio Times - JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy to film in Gloucestershire next week
Stroud will see Harry Potter actor Michael John Gambon and a BBC/HBO crew descend on Archway School, where shooting for the new drama will take place from Monday.

Despite its name, the Radio Times is a good magazine for TV listings in England.

 

[Pauline]

I did more searching and find that she lived in Tutshill in the Forest of Dean (near Chepstow and the River Severn).

Much of the filming will be at a local school, Archway, and the Stroud Police Station.

 

[Chris]

I liked the book a lot too. I can't wait to see the film. I also enjoyed her two mysteries written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith--have you read them?

 

[Pauline]

I read the first one but I can't remember what it was about. I think I liked it I will have a look for the second - I didn't know there was another one. She writes at a fast pace, doesn't she?

I think J.K. Rowling lives in Edinburgh now?

 

[Chris]

The first is Cuckoo's Calling and the second is The Silkworm. Both about private eye Cormarant Strike. I bought them both for my Kindle.

 

[Chris]

I liked the first one much better than the second.

 

[Roz]

Interesting that you liked Cuckoo's Calling better than The Silkworm, Chris. I felt just the opposite. But then I also hated Casual Vacancy; I could only get about a quarter of the way through before I stopped reading. I just found all the characters so unpleasant I didn't want to spend any more time with them.

 

[Lisa in Ottawa]

Interesting that you liked Cuckoo's Calling better than The Silkworm, Chris. I felt just the opposite. But then I also hated Casual Vacancy; I could only get about a quarter of the way through before I stopped reading. I just found all the characters so unpleasant I didn't want to spend any more time with them.

I quite liked Cukoo's Calling and am looking forward to The Silkworm. I better check my Kindle. I didn't know it was available. Ididn't mind Casual Vacancy. Didn't love it either.
I'm one of those rare people. I never read Harry Potter so her writng was fresh for me.

 

[Pauline]

I have not read Harry Potter either. I liked Casual Vacancy because it was so much about a village like the one I live in. We have a daily radio show, The Archers, which is about village life but mostly positive. I liked the negative version.

I will put The Silkworm on my read next list.

 

[artnbarb]

wonder if this will be the next "Downton Abbey"?

 

[Pauline]

I read the first one but I can't remember what it was about.

I am almost finished J K Rowling's second detective novel, The Silkworm, and I realize that I didn't read the first one! It is sitting on my Kindle waiting to be read. I like the second one.

 

[jonathan]

The first one is sitting on my kindle too!

 

[Pauline]

I read the first JK Rowling mystery (Cuckoo's Calling, written under the name Robert Goldbraith) and really enjoyed it. It was a good and detailed mystery, set in London. I liked it better than the second one (The Silkworm) because the mystery was more complex. What bugged me about the second one was that it was set in London in the winter, and there was snow on the ground for weeks. That does not happen here. We get snow some winters, but it does not hang around that long.

 

[Pauline]

A local newspaper reports that they have started filming in Northleach (in the center of the Cotswolds, between Stow-on-the-Wold and Cirencester). It looks like they have remade the village to be her fictional village.

Gloucestershire Echo - Pictures: Celebrities take over Northleach in the Cotswolds as filming began on JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, by Michael_Yong, August 05, 2014

 

[Pauline]

They are filming in the Painswick churchyard today! We are going to have a look.

 

[Pauline]

Last week the film crew turned the Painswick Charity Shop into a funeral parlor. Today they turned an empty shop (which years ago was a lovely tea room) into a "boudoir" - boutique selling sexy underclothes. We watched as they got read to film a scene, but the sun went behind a cloud so they did not film it. The sun is out now so they are probably filming. These two boys on bikes are the actors in this scene.