SWANSEA ON SCREEN: The Civic Centre is a London police HQ, the Guildhall is a bank and No Sign Bar is a London pub in this year’s TV dramas

If you have watched a British TV thriller this year, there is a fair chance you have seen Swansea without knowing it.

The Civic Centre has been a London police headquarters for Netflix, a London police office and a hospital for ITV, and Brecon Council’s offices for the BBC. The Guildhall has been a Sky prison drama, a Channel 4 war room and a Coutts bank. And the London pub in ITV’s Believe Me is No Sign Bar on Wind Street.

The list comes from a Swansea Council tourism report going to councillors next week, which calls it “another busy year” for cameras in the city.

Friday: Catherine Zeta-Jones

The one everybody is waiting for lands on Prime Video on Friday. Kill Jackie, the eight-part revenge thriller in which Zeta-Jones plays a retired drug smuggler in her own accent, is set in London, Bilbao, Lisbon and Swansea, and some of it was shot in her home city.

Already on your telly

ITV’s Believe Me, the four-part drama about the women who brought serial rapist John Worboys to justice, filmed across Swansea late last year and aired this spring. Its London pub interior is No Sign Bar.

Sky’s Prisoner, the action thriller starring Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle, used the Guildhall in 2025 and is on Sky Atlantic and NOW. The producers are back scouting for series two, the council says. They looked at the Civic Centre but the timing clashed with its redevelopment, so the Guildhall is in the frame again.

BBC One’s The Rapture, the Ruth Jones thriller that turned Port Talbot into the fictional Porth Hen, also shot inside the Guildhall and the new offices at 71/72 Kingsway. Channel 4’s The Undeclared War filmed its second series in the Guildhall back in 2024, and it has only just aired.

Still to come

Netflix’s The Lord’s Day, the six-part Bad Wolf drama starring Damson Idris, came to Swansea twice this year, with the Civic Centre standing in for London police HQ.

The BBC’s The Witch Farm, based on true events at a haunted farmhouse near Brecon, filmed in the spring. Swansea Museum played Brecon’s museum and archives, the Guildhall played Coutts in London, and the Civic Centre’s contact centre became the offices of Brecon Council.

Code Zero, a six-part ITV series set in London, is filming across south Wales right now, including the Civic Centre and other Swansea locations.

Santa Maria, the first ever S4C and ITV co-production, is the one drama on the list that is set here. It filmed through spring and summer at Caswell, Limeslade, Townhill and the bus station, and reaches S4C early next year before ITV later in 2027.

Swansea as Detroit, 1978

Strangest of all is A Colt Is My Passport. Swansea-based director Gareth Evans, the man behind The Raid and Gangs of London, is remaking a 1967 Japanese crime film for Amazon Studios, and he has set it in Detroit in 1978.

The council says it was filmed at locations across Swansea Bay. The story follows Colt, a Vietnam veteran turned contract killer, on the run after taking out a gangland boss. It is due out next year.

The regulars: a council chamber, Art Deco toilets and a Gower rectory

The Guildhall is the city’s busiest set. Visit Swansea Bay, the council’s tourism site, says productions have used the council chamber, which is off limits to the public, and even the Art Deco toilets, and that Gareth Evans turned the building into a snow-covered American police station for Netflix’s Havoc, his Tom Hardy thriller.

Rhossili Bay and the National Trust’s Old Rectory above it have been in Doctor Who, Torchwood, a string of adverts and Mumford & Sons’ Lover of the Light video with Idris Elba. The rectory goes back to holidaymakers between shoots, and it is not the only Gower spot on the list.

The Kardomah Café needs no set dressing at all, the site says: the Formica tables and vinyl floor do the period work themselves. Cambrian Place, with its Georgian frontages, and the red-brick terrace opposite the Brangwyn are the go-to streets for pre-war Swansea.

None of it is new. Peter Sellers filmed Only Two Can Play here in 1962, Twin Town put the city on screen in 1997, and Bishop Gore School was in Submarine and Hunky Dory. Their Finest, the 2016 wartime film with Gemma Arterton and Sam Claflin, turned the Grand Theatre into a 1940s cinema and used the Guildhall’s corridor and Brangwyn panels too.

More recently the city has hosted Mr Burton, BBC’s Dope Girls, Sky’s A Discovery of Witches, ITV’s Until I Kill You and Da Vinci’s Demons, the £20m Starz series, according to Creative Swansea, the council-run network for the city’s creative industries.

“A ready-made film set”

Gabriella Ricci, senior production executive at Bad Wolf, the Cardiff company behind The Lord’s Day, said in a piece for Creative Swansea why crews keep coming back.

“Swansea isn’t just a city, it’s a ready-made film set,” she said. “We’ve seen first-hand how locations here can double for everything from London streets to remote wilderness.”

The report goes to the council’s finance and regeneration scrutiny panel on Tuesday, alongside the tourism team’s case that the city’s screen credits are now part of its pitch to visitors.