Yahoo News From Succession to The Crown, the glamorous TV locations you can rent
Once upon a time, booking a holiday via your TV meant bagging a cut-price package deal off Teletext, before ending up in a random Mediterranean hotel where brown water came out of the taps. Thankfully, tastes and technology have changed.
The proliferation of both prestige TV drama and rental platforms like Airbnb means we can now spot enviable properties in our favourite boxset dramas, then book them in real life. Travel experts have reported a rise in so-called “TV tourism”, fuelled by lockdown viewing binges and vicarious wanderlust. When travel restrictions were finally lifted post-pandemic, Google Trends data reveals that searches for TV destinations skyrocketed four-fold.
TV has the ability to turn all sorts of places into travel hotspots. Not just rentable properties but entire cities and even specific restaurants too. When the second season of hit romcom Emily in Paris dropped on Netflix before Christmas, French destinations featured in the show saw accommodation searches rise by 30 per cent at least. Saint-Tropez alone witnessed an 80 per cent surge in online traffic.
Here in Blighty, Cornwall has experienced “a Poldark effect”. Ted Lasso fans are flocking to Richmond. UK tourism has benefited hugely from what travel experts call “the holy trinity” of Downton Abbey, The Crown and Bridgerton - especially popular with Anglophile holiday-makers from the US.
Even “TV dinners” have taken on a whole new meaning. Ever since hotelier-turned-spy Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) dined there in the BBC’s blockbuster adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Night Manager, it’s been nigh-on impossible to bag a table at Ca’s Patro March - an idyllic mountainside restaurant by the crystal-clear Mediterranean in Mallorca - without booking months ahead. Pastis from Sex & The City, Grand Central Oyster Bar from Mad Men, The Lobster Roll from The Affair, even the greasy spoon used for Speedy’s Sandwich Bar in Sherlock… All have seen business boom since appearing on-screen.
Yes, it’s never been easier to walk in a TV character’s shoes, eat their supper or stay in their selfie-friendly home. From Tuscan villas to Barcelona apartments, from Cotswolds mansions to Highland hideaways, here’s our pick of 10 memorable locations from recent hit series - all of which are bookable for high-definition getaways:
Marianne’s Italian villa
Normal People
Along with Tiger King, the BBC’s smash hit adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel was ubiquitous lockdown viewing. The Roman farmhouse owned by the family of heroine Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a rather more timeless location, also seen in films including Eat, Pray, Love.
Tenuta di Verzano is tucked away in Sant'Oreste, Lazio, 22 miles north of Rome. It’s packed with rustic charm and period detail, while the turquoise outdoor pool has dreamy mountainous views. No wonder lovestruck Connell (Paul Mescal) and his gold chain couldn’t wait to Interrail over there for a free holiday.
Price: From £34 per night for a private two-bedroom apartment within the villa.
Princess Margaret’s holiday villas
The Crown
Those with deep pockets can stay at the actual Les Jolies Eaux, the famed Mustique villa designed by artist Oliver Messel for Princess Margaret. A more affordable option is the Costa Del Sol estate which stood in for it in Netflix’s royal epic.
Hidden in the Andalusian hills at the tip of southern Spain, “Sea Orchid” sleeps 14 in a lavish villa with Moorish, Cuban and colonial influences. Views span the bay to North Africa, rolling gardens provide privacy and the pristine pool (which The Crown also used to replicate a Hollywood party) has its own al fresco kitchen. Don sunglasses, mix a cocktail and channel your inner Helen Bonham Carter.
Price: From £1192 per night.
Grace’s beach house
The Undoing
Melodramatic miniseries The Undoing starred Nicole Kidman as Manhattan psychologist Grace Fraser. When her seemingly perfect husband Jonathan (Hugh Grant on textbook bounder form) was accused of murdering his mistress, Grace donned a jewel-toned coat and fled to her minted family’s upstate bolthole.
The imposing estate sprawls over three acres in East Marion, Long Island. It was originally built in 1893 as a coastguard station but has been renovated in rustic style, with six bedrooms, pool and porches. Ideal for curling up under a cashmere blanket and gazing moodily into the middle distance. This wasn’t its TV debut, either. Fans of Lena Dunham’s Girls might recognise it from season three’s “Beach House” episode.
Price: From £917 per night.
Otis and Jean's Scandi chalet
Sex Education
Who needs Netflix and chill? Head for the Welsh borders and chill there instead. One of TV's more characterful houses is the Nordic-style, rust-hued hillside home of Sex Ed protagonist Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) and minxy mother Jean (Gillian Anderson), a sex therapist who has her consulting room there.
The Chalet in Herefordshire is a five-bedroom pad boasting treetop views of the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean. The cosy-but-lux interior was designed with colour consultancy from Farrow & Ball. There’s a plant-filled conservatory, patio with pizza oven and summerhouse with “secret cinema”. The ideal location for a sensual arousal workshop. Or just a minibreak.
Price: From £749 per night.
The Roy family’s Tuscan villa
Succession
If it’s good enough for TV’s most dysfunctional billionaire dynasty, it’s probably good enough for us mere mortals. The third season finale of Succession saw the wedding of Lady Caroline Collingwood (Harriet Walter), ex-wife of media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox), at this 17th century baroque mansion in “Chiantishire”. Cue merger meetings, back-stabbings, near-drownings and a certain misdialled “intimate” pic.
Currently owned by ex-model Marina Hanbury, Countess of Durham, Villa Cetinale near Siena boasts 13 bedrooms, pool, tennis court, gym, chapel and award-winning gardens, plus private chef and housekeeping staff. So ravishing, the sight of it might make you swear like a true Roy.
Price: From £6688 per night.
Dan & Emily’s clifftop glasshouse
The Nest
Another lockdown hit, the BBC One surrogacy thriller starred Line of Duty’s Martin Compston and Gentleman Jack’s Sophie Rundle as a Glaswegian couple who pay a troubled teen to have their baby. However, the real scene-stealer was their wow-inducing waterfront pad.
Cape Cove in Argyll is an award-winning, open-plan glass house built on the site of a wartime naval outlook post. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide unfettered views of Loch Long. It even has its own private beach and hot tub overlooking the shore. Certainly puts DS Steve Arnott’s poky flat in perspective.
Price: From £606 per night.
Madeline’s oceanfront mansion
Big Little Lies
The star-studded whodunit was set in the picturesque mountainside town of Monterey but its high-spec locations were dotted right down the Californian coast. This waterside pile, owned by perfectionist alpha mom Madeline Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon), is actually in Malibu, mere metres from the Pacific.
With seven bedrooms, a detached two-storey guesthouse, expansive decks, jacuzzi and outdoor fireplace, it’s described as “Cape Cod casual chic”. The granite kitchen island alone is an area the size of Wales. Ish.
Price: From £2505 per night.
Villanelle's Spanish apartment
Killing Eve
It was Jodie Comer’s directional designer wardrobe which gobbled up column inches but the interiors in globe-trotting spy thriller Killing Eve weren’t too shabby either. Series three’s palatial Barcelona apartment was a particular Art Nouveau stunner.
Called “The Architects’ Flat”, it overlooks Plaça de Lesseps in the Catalan capital’s historic Gràcia district. It has moulded ceilings, distressed walls and huge picture windows, not to mention a glass gallery and private pool. This dramatic dwelling has also been used by film directors Pedro Almodovar, Alan Clarke and Wim Wenders. A killer home, fit for any assassin or citybreaker.
Price: From £307 per night.
Damian Campbell’s waterside villa
Showtrial
Last autumn’s twist-laden BBC legal thriller Showtrial was mostly shot in Bristol but its head-turning location was 50 miles away in the Cotswolds. The production used a modernist mansion at The Lakes in Gloucestershire as the home of dastardly property magnate Damian Campbell (played by James Frain).
Designed by Philippe Starck, this luxury rural retreat is spread across 850 acres of freshwater lakes and woodland. Glass-fronted villas and apartments have panoramic views, while the idyllic estate offers outdoor activities, spa, gym, pool and restaurant. Think Centerparcs with pretensions.
Price: From £750 per night for a two-bedroom lakeside cabin.
Masha’s wellness retreat
Nine Perfect Strangers
Amazon’s eerie miniseries about health resort Tranquillum House, run by enigmatic Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman), got "a mixed reaction™" from critics but everyone agreed the setting was spectacular. It was filmed at real-life wellness sanctuary Soma, located amid 22 acres of lush bamboo rainforest in Australia’s Byron Bay.
As a hotel rather than a private rental, this one’s an outlier but it’s worth it. This oasis has a freshwater infinity pool, Zen garden, geodesic yoga dome, infrared sauna, magnesium ice bath and three ayurvedic treatment rooms. You can even eat at the seven-metre dining table memorably featured in the drama. Now all you need is to be drugged by Kidman while she speaks in a bizarre accent…
Price: From £4948 per night.
