Holliday Grainger stars as an up-and-coming detective in BBC1 thriller The Capture, with Callum Turner playing a soldier implicated in a terrible crime after being caught on CCTV.

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The drama is set in London, where it was also filmed. Here are the locations you'll see on screen...


How did they film the CCTV surveillance room?

The Capture

Much of the drama takes place within Counter Terror's command room, nicknamed "the Mothership" by the cast and crew. A huge curved wall is covered in screens all the way to the ceiling, and this futuristic office space is packed full of high-tech computers and facial recognition software carrying out surveillance on terror suspects.

The Capture's production team actually built the Mothership from scratch at West London Studios in Hayes, wiring in hundreds of screens to play mocked-up CCTV footage recorded during the London film shoot.

Of course, the public is not allowed to see the real-life version of this room. But it sounds pretty spot-on, as producer Derek Ritchie says: "Our police advisor was quite delighted when he got to see this set. He has a background in this kind of work, [and] he was blown away by the fact that we've created something that's not that far off what the Met actually have."

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Ritchie adds: "The police advisor was not willing to tell us too much obviously, because all of that stuff has to be kept very secret, but particularly from [The Capture's screenwriter] Ben Chanan, from his documentaries, and the police he's spoken to over the years, he's had a very good sense of how all that works.

"So we, as ever, took dramatic licence to a certain extent in how that set was constructed and how it feels, but it's very grounded in reality and the reality we've managed to cobble together. And certainly when our police advisor stepped on there, seeing his reaction - I figured we got it right."


Did they really film in The Shard?

The Capture in The Shard

Yes! One key scene between DI Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) and Commander Danny Hart (Ben Miles) takes place in the restaurant at the Shard, where it was actually filmed overnight.

The Shard is a 95-storey skyscraper in central London, and the tallest building in the United Kingdom. Designed by the architect Renzo Piano, it has restaurants on the 31st, 32nd and 33rd floors, including the super-pricey upmarket dining room Aqua Shard.

"We just wanted to enjoy another texture of London," Derek Ritchie explains. "Those beautiful vistas, that sense of some of the opulence that comes with Danny Hart's world – the character that Ben Miles plays. And that location did so much for us on that front, and luckily with our schedule we were able to go in right after New Year when the restaurant was a bit quieter and they were happy for us to buy it out for a night and make the most of it."


Where was The Capture filmed in London?

"We've been all over London to marvellous places, and more down at heel places," says Ritchie. "We've got the Shard, Printworks in Bermondsey, we did a week's worth of shooting there. We've been down in Sutton enjoying the delights of the suburbs."

Billed as a "cultural destination", Printworks London was once home to the largest printing factory in Western Europe and retains an industrial vibe. It is a popular music venue.

Further shooting took place in Stratford near the Olympic Park, in Holborn, and at Sutton Police Station.

"It's a very rich tapestry of cross-cutting and different London locations," executive producer Rosie Alison says.


Where was the Afghanistan footage filmed?

Callum Turner plays Shaun Emery in The Capture

While serving in Afghanistan, Shaun Emery (Callum Turner) has been convicted of an unlawful killing based on helmet-cam footage recorded by a fellow soldier. He insists he's innocent, and episode one beings with his appeal hearing – where his barrister Hannah Roberts (Laura Haddock) brings new evidence suggesting the footage is fatally flawed.

But surprisingly, this Afghanistan footage was actually filmed in Spain.

Ritchie reveals: "Before we started the main body of the shoot, we all dashed off to Spain for weekends, and we filmed in the desert near Malaga, which was fantastic.

"We had some real soldiers who were playing the rest of his squad, who had been in Afghanistan, and they couldn't believe it – they thought the landscape was an incredible match for what they'd experienced."

He adds: "We shot it very much on helmet cams, and we let them run with it so it felt as real, as visceral, as it possibly could in that incredible Spanish landscape."

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The Capture begins on Tuesday 3rd September at 9pm on BBC1

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