Where Was Martin Clunes’ New ITV Drama Filmed?

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Inside ITV’s new drama

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A new county lines drama will kick off on ITV this evening, all centred on a widowed Welsh farmer facing a sinister new challenge in single fatherhood. But where was Out There filmed? Let’s go behind the scenes…

Martin Clunes as Nathan in Out There. (© Buffalo Pictures/ITV)

Where Was Out There Filmed?

ITV’s new drama Out There was filmed entirely in Wales in 2023. With funding support from Creative Wales, Out There’s Welsh-born director and writer shares how the team was ‘able to explore beautiful and rarely seen areas around the Black Mountains and to use local talent for our cast and crew’.

The story follows Nathan (Martin Clunes), a farmer and single father whose son is drawn into the underbelly of the very real county lines problem facing the UK. So why Wales as a backdrop? ‘Marc Evans, the director, had this thought that where it is in Wales is kind of border land,’ Clunes shares. ‘So much of Out There is about boundaries, borders, encroachment and threat, and it is all sort of tied in together. But county lines is very much a nationwide problem. The way we are telling it, those issues come up.

‘I really enjoyed filming in Wales,’ the Doc Martin star adds. ‘The locations were beautiful. I like being on a farm and being in the countryside. I was in my element and the horse was lovely. She was so sweet natured and I think all the crew wanted a horse by the end of the filming. I wanted to take her home with me.’

Evans adds he chose Wales simply because: ‘I am from Wales.’ Likewise, he thought ‘it would be interesting for Martin not to go into very Welsh territory as an English actor’.

While Out There was set and filmed in Wales, Clunes is, of course, not Welsh – and neither is his on-screen son Louis Ashbourne Serkis who drew on a dialect coach to master his borders accent. In fact, filming Out There was London-born Ashbourne Serkis’ first venture into the country – but he definitely made the most of it. During his downtime, the 20-year-old star tackled the Welsh Three Peaks Challenges: Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), Cadair Idris and Pen y Fan. ‘I managed to explore the area and I felt very lucky to have the ability to be shooting an amazing project and to explore at the same time,’ Ashbourne Serkis says. ‘I definitely want to go back.

‘Wales is beautiful,’ he adds. ‘It is amazing, so green and wide open spaces. The way the DOP shot [Out There], the scenery looks so dramatic, such a contrast in the setting for something like this to take place. It feels like the countryside is so innocent and green and peaceful, but it has been injected with this awful, infectious drug trafficking operation.’

That said, Carly-Sophia Davies (who plays Johnny’s friend Sadie) is from Wales – Port Talbot to be precise. ‘It was great to be able to go home [around filming], and my mother was very happy about that,’ the actor shares. ‘But it was very odd too to be filming something where I grew up, playing a character I felt I really resonated with. It was a very surreal experience, but I felt very privileged to be able to have a story like that to tell.

It was great to see Port Talbot in a different way, and to see different parts of it, and parts of my own country that I hadn’t seen, and have a new relationship with the place I grew up in. The house which Sadie and Rhys live in is very close to where I grew up, literally round the corner from my old school. The chip shop in the chip shop scene is the one I used to go to on my lunch break from school. The pub we filmed in was where I had my prom. You have memories in all these places. It was a really special experience.

Not only was Wales the setting and filming location for Out There, but the production drew on local talent, too. ‘Out There showcases some of Wales’ stunning locations, and is yet another example of first-class drama being made in Wales and utilising Welsh talent at all levels,’ shares Joedi Langley, interim head of Creative Wales. ‘I’m pleased that the funding and support offered via Creative Wales helped to ensure the creation of 14 trainee opportunities on set, including one apprentice and four placements for trainees based in Mid Wales, and provided quality career opportunities for our workforce.’

Louis Ashbourne Serkis as Johnny in Out There

Out There Filming Locations

Specific filming locations include Newport (this is the city we see on screen), Llandovery (which plays the local village), the previously mentioned Black Mountains and the borderlands area between England and Wales sometimes known as the Welsh Marches. The latter two ‘are very interesting areas but haven’t been seen much on television,’ shares director Evans.

When scouting for Out There filming locations cropped up, ‘we had to find a remote area – an isolated farm in a hidden valley,’ the director says. This meant ‘finding a beef and sheep farm rather than dairy [farm], which tend to be situated in lower pasturelands.’

This remoteness wasn’t just for the purposes of filming in private. ‘We thought it would be interesting that our lead character would be slightly isolated,’ the director says. ‘So the Black Mountains area towards the Brecon Beacons was great landscape both visually and the sense of loneliness and isolation. We thought it would be much more interesting to celebrate the countryside while at the same time examining the cancer eating away at it. The countryside allows you to enjoy the landscape in a way that may be a more urban show wouldn’t. It opens up the drama to be more epic.

‘The farmers we worked with really informed the way we developed the series,’ Evans adds. ‘One of the interesting things about making a series like this is that you talk to people and learn things about their way of life. We are hoping that we have reflected that in the series in a way they will understand.’