Fleetwood on film through the decades

Over the years, the port has been chosen as the backdrop for the filming of several movies and TV shows.

These archive pictures show various occasions throughout the last century and the start of the 21st century when Fleetwood was visited by camera crews.

In July 1990, film crews came to Fleetwood to capture the port on camera for a drama by the novelist and playwright Alan Bleasdale, author of the award-winning Boys From The Black Stuff.

The six-part series – Great British Holidays – took Lancashire and Fleetwood, with its windswept isolation, as its inspiration.

Bleasdale had written about the town without ever visiting, but was relieved to find the atmosphere was he had imagined.

He said: “I wanted somewhere isolated. It isn’t derogatory to say the town is more isolated now more than ever, particularly after the advent of Benidorm as a favourite destination for the GBH.”

Also pictured are Edward Woodward and June Whitfield on the beach at Fleetwood, in July 1996, filming the BBC comedy serial Common As Muck.

In 2005, the cast and crew of ITV’s 1960s hospital drama The Royal came to the port to film at Fleetwood Nautical Campus’ indoor training tank for a dramatic watery climax to an episode.

An ambulance was filmed flooding with water.

And earlier, in 2001, an episode of hit police show, starring David Jason as DI Jack Frost, A Touch Of Frost, used the campus’ Environmental Tank at the Broadwater college, for a dramatic underwater scene.

In 1999, Chester’s teen soap, Hollyoaks, visited the college and filmed scenes.

And, of course, it was also the place where evil Coronation Street killer Richard Hillman was filmed meeting his watery death.

In autumn 2003, a haunting psychological thriller about a woman searching for her missing sister in Fleetwood, Frozen, was filmed in the port, including St Peter’s Church.