Filmed in Liverpool: The City & The City premiers tonight on BBC2

Liverpool is no stranger to the big screen or the small screen these days with location managers for movies, TV shows, ads and more flocking to the city from far and wide.

The eagerly anticipated adaptation of China Miéville’s mind-bending novel The City & The City premiers tonight on BBC Two starring Liverpool’s own David Morrissey as Inspector Tyador Borlú and yes, you guessed it, Liverpool provided the perfect backdrop.

When the body of a foreign student is discovered in the streets of the down-at-heel city of Besźel, it’s just another day’s work for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad (David Morrissey). But he uncovers evidence that the murdered girl came from Ul Qoma, a city that shares a dangerous and volatile relationship with Besźel, and this case will challenge everything Borlú holds dear.

BBC

China Miéville, three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, published The City &The City in 2009 to dazzling acclaim, drawing comparisons with Kafka, Orwell and Philip K Dick. He says of the television drama: ‘It’s been extraordinary and moving to see this huge process, whereby a book written alone is collectively transformed into something familiar yet quite new. And it is extraordinary and moving to see the final result.’

Tony Grisoni (The Young Pope, Southcliffe, The Red Riding Trilogy) has adapted this four-part genre-busting thriller from one of Britain’s foremost fantasy writers in a production made by Mammoth Screen and directed by Tom Shankland (Les Misérables, House of Cards,The Missing).

The cast also includes Lara Pulver (Sherlock) as Borlú’s wife Katrynia, Mandeep Dhillon (Some Girls) as Constable Corwi of the Besźel Policzai, Maria Schrader (Deutschland 83) as Senior Detective Dhatt of the Ul Qoma Militsya, Ron Cook (Hot Fuzz) as Borlú’s superior Commissar Gadlem, Danny Webb (Humans) as hard-right nationalist politician Major Syedr, and Christian Camargo (Penny Dreadful) as Doctor Bowden, an American academic.

The City & The City was filmed on location in both Liverpool and Manchester and we can’t wait to see both city’s under the spotlight for what looks like one of the best dramas on our screens in 2018.

You can watch The City & The City tonight (Friday 6th April) on BBC2 at 9pm.