TV tour

New Zealand’s appeal as a film backdrop is proven, whether its landscape is doubling as Middle Earth, Narnia or Skull Island, or starring. It’s in the second category that a six-part BBC series falls. follows the arrival in 1860s New Zealand of two immigrants Anna and Emery, played by Eve Hewson ( ) and Himesh Patel ( ), where they are drawn into intrigue and murder in the midst of a gold-rush. The boomtown of Hokitika is a magnet for cunning characters such as Lydia Wells – an occult-tinged turn from Eva Green ( ). Though producers used a set in Auckland to remake the shopfronts of Hokitika, out-of-town scenes were shot under the peaks of the Southern Alps. For Eleanor Catton, who wrote the Booker Prizewinning novel , it was crucial that filming take place in New Zealand, with its flora and fauna and quality of light. In the series, scenes of Victorian dresses getting muddied on wild shores and early colonists little at ease in a world of strange plants and animals might have viewers recall the 1993 Kiwi cinema classic, , which first brought New Zealand to the attention of filmmakers and audiences worldwide.