An adrenaline-pumping knife chase through graffiti-sprayed lanes takes place in the comedy-thriller The Outlaws, while class tensions simmer at a lavish student ball in the legal drama Showtrial. The city providing the backdrop and inspiration for both these series is Bristol – a location now so popular with film and TV makers that crews are actually falling over themselves in the streets. The city council has been inundated with requests to film in the city’s dank alleys, high-rises and grand Georgian squares since the beginning of the year, according to Bristol Film Office, which is part of the city council. It has seen a 225% increase in drama production on pre-pandemic levels. In the first quarter of 2019/20 there were four major drama productions under way in Bristol – but this more than tripled to 13 in the first quarter of 2020/21. Since January, 15 high-end TV dramas have been filmed in the city. “The last year has been like nothing we have experienced,” says Natalie Moore, who manages Bristol Film Office. “We were totally inundated by the amount of filming. It was noticeable in the city too – everyone seemed to come across filming. There were a few clashes. We had crews turning up on the same day on the same street.” The city has long been a hub of nature films and animation; it is the home of the BBC’s Natural History Unit and the Oscar-winning Aardman Animations. But now, drama writers are increasingly setting the action in Bristol and drawing on its diverse cultures and rich, evolving history. The city’s role in momentous national events, such as the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, has inspired plotlines. The Outlaws, filmed in locations throughout the city, follows seven bickering lawbreakers, including Myrna, a veteran anti-racist campaigner, who is ordered to do community service for “tearing down that statue of Edward Colston”. Stephen Merchant, who wrote and starred in the show and grew up in Bristol, rewrote parts of the script while filming to reflect the mass protest in June last year. The city was more than just a backdrop, says Merchant. “For The Outlaws, I wanted Bristol to be another character in the show. Although a lot of filming takes place in Bristol, the city is often doubling for somewhere else; it hasn’t played itself very often, but it’s such a visually interesting place. I’m actually nervous about extolling its virtues too much because it will be overrun with productions and I won’t be able to get anyone next time I film there.” Whereas The Outlaws takes viewers into the deprived, desperate parts of the city, Showtrial dwells on the lives of wealthy students. Simon Heath, its executive producer, feels the city has too often been overlooked: “It has its own unique identity, culture and accent – yet has hardly been seen in TV drama. We needed a city known for having a prestigious university sought after by students from privileged backgrounds. So Bristol was a no-brainer.” Another successful drama, this time from Channel 4, Before We Die used many locations around the city, with one of the producers calling it “an interesting, quasi-European” city. The public sector has provided much of the infrastructure for the city’s drama boom. Ten years ago, the council turned an abandoned bottling plant in one of the most deprived wards in the country into the largest studio facility in the west of England. The Bottle Yard Studios, which is one of only two council-owned studios in the country, has eight stages, with three more opening next summer, following an £11.3m investment from the West of England metro mayor, Labour’s Dan Norris. The forthcoming BBC and HBO psychological thriller, The Girl Before, has been filmed in the studio and on locations in Bristol. “It is very unusual to have a council-run studio but it has been hugely successful,” says Laura Aviles, who manages the complex. “It allows us to deliver social benefits, including training local people to work in the industry.” Thispublic investment – alongside Bristol’s burgeoning reputation as a “Green Hollywood” of natural history film-making – has allowed independent production companies to take root in the city. According to research by the University of the West of England, Bristol has the largest concentration of such companies outside London, with a growing number making dramas. “There are now 188 production companies in Bristol,” says Prof Andrew Spicer from UWE. “The city has developed a critical mass of expertise. There is a large pool oftalented production staff and cheaper studio space than London.” For Bristol deputy mayor Craig Cheney, the turnaround in the city fortunes is striking. “[The boom in high-end drama is] bringing Bristol to a new audience that less than a decade ago may have seen us as a west of England backwater but now see a different, confident city with all the challenges and complexities an urban area brings.”