TV & Showbiz

Dramatic ‘gunfire’ and ‘explosions’ shake the Northern Quarter as film crews roll into town

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 23rd March 2022

Northern Quarter residents have spent most of this afternoon on edge as Disney+ crews film action scenes in the area.

The sound of loud ‘gunfire’ has been echoing through the streets as people were enjoying a few drinks in the spring sunshine.

Some who live and work in the area have also been able to see controlled explosions bursting through windows.

Disney+ arrived in town last week to film scenes for upcoming heist series Culprits.

Video capturing the ‘gunshots’ in the Northern Quarter this evening. Credit: The Manc Group

The show will star Gemma Arterton, Eddie Izzard and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett.

Several streets in the Northern Quarter have been closed off to facilitate filming.

This evening, men dressed in riot gear were spotted walking around while the sound of fake gunshots rang out.

One local said she ‘honestly sh*t myself’ at the racket today.

Earlier this week, someone posted: “Does anyone know what they are filming in Manchester Piccadilly cos there’s me minding my own business walking by getting bread and milk and I walked past a shoot out scene down one of the side streets it scared the life out of me.”

Read more: Jogger robbed at knife point for Rolex watch worth an estimated £11k

On Twitter, another wrote: “That filming in the northern quarter had such promise to be exciting but today has just been loads and loads of gun fire on repeat and i am losing my mind”

Someone else posted: “These gunshots in Manchester’s northern quarter bloody hellllll”

One person even managed to capture footage of the fake explosion today, saying: “Still made me jump even though I knew it was coming.”

Culprits isn’t the first series to use the Northern Quarter for filming.

The area often doubles up as New York for films and series including Captain America and the upcoming Morbius film.

It’s also been used for scenes in Peaky Blinders and Channel 4’s hit mini-series It’s A Sin.

Featured image: The Manc Group

TV & Showbiz

BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Do you need to sort your life out?

We get that this may sound like a pretty brutal and upfront question to ask, but don’t shoot the messenger, it’s technically the BBC asking it, as producers are currently on the hunt for messy people who could do with ‘sorting their life out’ to take part in the new series of one of its hit TV shows – and they’re encouraging Greater Manchester residents to apply.

While the title of the show may, quite literally, be Sort Your Life Out, we promise it’s not as harsh as it seems, as in reality, it’s just offering you a helping hand to tidy up.

That’s right, if you would you like your home to be totally transformed by none other than Stacey Solomon and her expert team, then through a life-changing declutter, supersize spring clean, and some ingenious carpentry solutions to top things off, you could bring some job back to where you live.

The BBC is looking for messy Mancs who need to ‘sort their life out’ to take part in new series / Credit: BBC | FreerangeStock

Stacey and her expert team of organising fanatics can help you let go of the things you don’t need, and streamline what you do.

Plus they’ll also help to create space-saving storage and put systems in place to save you time and money in the future.

“Whether you have a new baby on the way, want to run a business from home, find it hard to let go of sentimental items or just want to create calm in the chaos, we’d love to hear from you,” producers said in a casting call on the BBC website.

Does this process sounds like something you could benefit from then? Producers of the hit show are looking for families or shared households to take part in a potential future series.

Read more:

Find out more and apply to Sort Your Life Out on the BBC website here.

Featured Image – BBC

TV & Showbiz

Some Oasis fans are only just discovering who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to

Danny Jones Danny Jones Noel Gallagher wrote Cast No Shadow about Oasis

Die-hard Oasis fans typically pride themselves on knowing the most intricate details about the band and its history, from where the first demos were recorded and when, to how Peggy Gallagher takes her tea, but we were surprised to learn that many don’t know who ‘Cast No Shadow’ is dedicated to.

Fans are already queuing up outside Heaton Park ahead of the Manc band’s massive homecoming, but we’d be curious to quiz how many of them know the story behind the track taken from Oasis’ seminal sophomore album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

It seems that until very recently, even some of the most avid Britpop fans were unaware that the song was written with another icon of the genre and local music legend in mind: Richard Ashcroft.

While claiming it was written about him would be too reductive, and Noel Gallagher himself has openly clarified this, he has also regularly made it known that the tune and some of the lyrics, in particular, act as somewhat of an ode to the Wigan wordsmith.

The elder Gallagher brother has long maintained a deep level of admiration for Ashcroft, citing him as one of the best singer-songwriters he’s ever come across, and regularly felt like both he and The Verve were not given the recognition they deserved at the time.

As touched upon briefly in the clip above, Noel dedicated the track to his friend Richard around the time that he split from his bandmates and began writing solo material, much of which has gone on to become beloved by countless Brits, certainly here in the North and Greater Manchester.

The now 58-year-old Oasis songwriter believes the ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, ‘A Song for the Lovers’ and ‘They Don’t Own Me’ writer, just to name a very small but stellar sample size, was overlooked for far too long and, to some degree, still is massively underappreciated.

We tend to agree.

In fact, we think he put it best when he said this in a BBC Radio 1 interview back in 1997: “I don’t write songs about many people – I’ve written songs about him [Liam], I’ve written songs about me mam, I’ve written songs about my wife, I’ve written songs about Richard Ashcroft.”

“That man is a genius, and I tell you what, man, he ain’t doing it for himself: he’s doing it for me. He has got to be a better songwriter than me, and in return, I’ve got to write better songs than him. That’s what it’s about.”

‘Cast No Shadow’ also led to one of the most beautiful but subtle pieces of art you can find anywhere in Manchester – a personal favourite of ours, we’ll confess.

Noel has revealed on multiple occasions that when he first played and revealed that he’d dedicated ‘Cast No Shadow’ to Ashcroft, Richard himself was left nearly ‘in tears’.

Speaking to The Guardian back in 2010, just a year after Oasis parted ways on the painful night in Paris, Ashcroft himself confessed: “I can’t work out if he means I’m a witch, vampire or just incredibly emaciated and thin cos, you know, I haven’t really got enough body mass to cast a shadow?”

You’d have to ask the ‘Champagne Supernova’ creator himself, but he’s said that while written directly about him, it is a tribute to his “genius”, and when his friend and fellow Greater Mancunian artist finally got his number one for ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, he said he was “the happiest man in the world.”

His love for The Verve as a whole still remains, too, insisting that just like Liam’s love for The Stone Roses’ John Squire, he believes lead guitarist Nick McCabe is still “one of the best” he’s ever seen.

The Live ’25 reunion has don’t plenty to reignite and an already firm love affair with one of the biggest bands there’s ever been, and it’s also encouraged a whole new generation and demographic of fans to dig further down into the various facets of being Oasis fans involves. Exhibit B…

Explaining the ‘Poznań’ and why Oasis fans are doing it at their Live ’25 reunion tour gigs

Read more:

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Featured Images — manc_wanderer (via Instagram)/Simon Q (via Flickr)

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