Streaming service ITVX will premiere a collection of new dramas on December 8 - among them provocative teen drama Tell Me Everything.

Created by Mark O'Sullivan, who was born at the QEII Hospital and lived in the Haldens area for his entire childhood, the series centres on Jonny Murphy, who lives with his family above a pub in Welwyn Garden City. 

And like Edgar Wright's apocalyptic pub crawl movie The World's End starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, TME filming took place in Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth, as well as elsewhere in Hertfordshire.

Welwyn Hatfield Times: Lauryn Ajufo as Neve, Spike Fearn as Louis, and Eden H. Davies as Jonny filming Tell Me Everything in Letchworth.Lauryn Ajufo as Neve, Spike Fearn as Louis, and Eden H. Davies as Jonny filming Tell Me Everything in Letchworth. (Image: ITVX, DRAMA REPUBLIC)

Here's some of the Tell Me Everything filming locations and the inspiration behind them.

 

1. Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire 

As one would expect from a series set in Welwyn Garden City and created by a writer from the town, location filming for Tell Me Everything took place in the second garden city - but not as much as viewers watching might expect.

Series creator Mark O'Sullivan grew up in Welwyn Garden City, attending Holy Family Primary School and then Monk's Walk, before studying at Oaklands College in WGC.

"I had a few jobs in WGC - a Saturday job in the Pond Tool Company shop, theatre technician at Campus West, and I once spent a year cleaning the factory floor at Roche," said Mark.

He later taught at Sir Frederic Osborn School, now Ridgeway Academy. So returning to his hometown for teen drama Tell Me Everything was a no-brainer.

"When I first decided to write something about my teenage years, it was automatically in WGC in my head," revealed Mark, who has lived in and around Hitchin for the last 20 years.

"I suppose it couldn’t have been anywhere else - that’s where I spent those years. It was certainly small-town England.

"There’s often a bit of a discussion about setting with a channel when you’re making a show, and I fully expected ITV to insist on setting it somewhere more well known, but they actually loved WGC, its uniqueness, and the fact it’s not really been seen too much on screen up until this point (World’s End aside).

"It was perfect for me - I could picture everything perfectly. When developing the ideas and writing the episodes, I spent a lot of time walking around my old haunts. Some of the specific places I’d set things in my head became the actual filming locations."

As for resemblances between the fictional WGC created for TME and the real place, Mark said: "To me, it’s very similar, even though not all of it was actually filmed there.

"I wanted to capture small town Britain, but also the unusual visual and spatial feeling of Welwyn. People are always really amazed when they visit (certainly the people involved in the show) - they couldn’t believe this spacious, manicured, almost American-style town existed so close to London. So that’s one side of it.

"But then there’s the shops, the woods, the places you end up hanging around when you’re not quite legally old enough to go to the pub yet." 

Mark's hang-out spots in WGC during his younger days included the Black Fan Lagoon and the hill overlooking Panshanger golf course.

"As a kid, me and my mates spent almost our entire summers around the Lagoon (Black Fan Lagoon as some people know it). We never actually went in the water - we valued our health too much!"

He later spent time hanging around the town centre, "especially after McDonald's opened", and at the Barn Theatre - "a gem of a place with fabulous people".

"Once I discovered theatre and drama, I spent almost every possible moment involved with that - first with the Welwyn Thalians (who are still going strong) and then the Barn," said Mark.  

"When me and my mates started to look old enough, we’d spend weekends in Welwyn Village, attempting the ‘Welwyn 7 - a pint in the (then) 7 pubs in the village. They were messy, brilliant nights." 

As for WGC on screen in Tell Me Everything, Mark said: "I wish we’d been able to film more scenes actually in WGC than we could - it was difficult for all sorts of reasons.

"And I know, as a WG citizen, I’d be watching saying 'THAT’S not Welwyn!' So Letchworth has doubled for some parts of town, as has bits of Hatfield, and further afield in Watford and beyond.

"But some places are the real deal - under the White Bridge, the Shredded Wheat factory (I can’t wait for WGC people to see that), the old Roche site (just metres away from where I spent that year cleaning the floor), and - most importantly for me - the place I’d originally intended for one of the main characters to live - The Hedgehog pub in Shoplands, which we’ve renamed ’The Angel’.

"And Holy Family Church next door - which is the church me and my family went to when I was growing up."

 

2. Broadway, Letchworth

Welwyn Hatfield Times: The Tell Me Everything cast in the fountain.The Tell Me Everything cast in the fountain. (Image: ITVX/DRAMA REPUBLIC)

Carla Woodcock, who plays Zia in TME, said: "There was a day where we had to run into the fountain. That was fun until we got into the fountain.

"I didn’t realise quite how cold the fountain was going to be. It was freezing! That
was not the most fun. Luckily we only needed a few takes."

The fountain in question is the one in Broadway, Letchworth.

Welwyn Hatfield Times: Eden H. Davies as Jonny in Tell Me Everything.Eden H. Davies as Jonny in Tell Me Everything. (Image: ITVX/DRAMA REPUBLIC)

Welwyn Hatfield Times: Lauryn Ajufo as Neve and Spike Fearn as Louis in ITVX's Tell Me Everything.Lauryn Ajufo as Neve and Spike Fearn as Louis in ITVX's Tell Me Everything. (Image: ITVX, DRAMA REPUBLIC)