Another country

There seems to be an element of innocent surprise that the London-based producers of a new historical TV series about the English civil war have filmed the whole lot in countryside near Cape Town, while being funded largely by Channel 4.

It's not just that they staged the 1645 battle of Naseby, turning point of the war after Royalists forces were shattered, in untouched South African rural landscape, instead of the real Naseby in Northamptonshire. They also recreated bits of Oxford within a purpose-built set in the lovely forests of Oak Valley, near Cape Town.

Of course they could have found a suitable battlefield site; if not Naseby itself, somewhere else in England. And they could have filmed in the real Oxford. But they chose not to.

I've been actively delving into the issue of where to base a television drama, a hot topic within the closed world of TV. The production manager of the civil war series, called The Devil's Whore, was crystal clear about the motives. This is all about saving money, keeping within ever tightening TV budgets, as recession bites, and making sure that co-producers, who share the costs, and are frequently American, are happy with the overall look.

Britain has become largely too expensive for all but the most lavishly funded of BBC costume dramas. On top of that, many UK regions do not have the kind of subsidies or tax write-offs that other countries deploy, which can knock a sizeable percentage off the final bill.

Take a recent BBC1 comedy drama The Invisibles, about former conmen trying to go straight. This was originally set in the Thames Valley. It was rewritten for sleepy coastal Devon. But, as the director explained to me, it was made in quiet lookalike seaside resorts in Ireland. Even more bizarrely, it was filmed half in Northern Ireland, and half in Eire, to attract the various film and production subsidies available from both.

In the coming years, I think it will be increasingly unlikely that any major television dramas are set in the UK, if there is an element of choice or discretion about the location attached.

A few days ago one of Britain's best-known producers told me over a drink at the Edinburgh festival that he'd moved a drama away from Manchester, to Dublin, because by doing so he effectively increased the budget massively – and the profit.

There are a few exceptions. The difficulty in faking the atmosphere and sights of London makes it hard to substitute. But that is rare. I think this loss of authenticity is very sad, but it's best for viewers not be led up the garden path. And sometimes it is the only sensible decision. The Passion, last Easter's BBC1 drama about the crucifixion, was set in Morocco, not Israel or Palestine.

Anyway, we have long grown used to the fact that many Hollywood productions are pretty lax about these matters. Saving Private Ryan staged the Normandy landings on Irish beaches. Braveheart's misty mountains were also Irish.

Its possible the wheel might one day turn. Until very recently television productions enjoyed a long flirtation with eastern Europe. The BBC's romping Robin Hood is set in Hungary, in pristine forests. Lithuania was the choice for ITV's series The Palace, earlier this year. It needed a lot of opulent internal sets, and Lubjiana had plenty of those, and cheap craftsmen. But the drama flopped, in part because it simply looked wrong. The Invisibles did badly too, despite a wonderful cast including Jenny Agutter.

But with the euro and aligned currencies appreciating rapidly, eastern Europe is now falling out favour – while South Africa is on the up – helped by the weather, good technicians and a growing familiarity. Evan Wright's Generation Kill, about the embedded journalist moving across Iraq with the Marines in the opening days of the war to secure Baghdad has just been shot – in Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. Desert, it seems, is desert. And even modest television dramas are on the move.