Liverpool film locations guide

A brief history of Liverpool as a filming city

Liverpool’s rise as a favoured filming location isn’t a purely recent phenomenon, though the pace has accelerated considerably over the past 15-20 years. The city has featured in British film and television productions going back decades, but the scale and frequency of major productions choosing Liverpool grew substantially from the 2000s onward, coinciding with the city’s broader cultural regeneration around the 2008 Capital of Culture year and a deliberate strategy by local authorities to court the screen industry as a genuine economic sector, not merely an occasional novelty. That strategic investment — in permitting processes, local crew training and promotion of the city’s locations to production companies — has compounded over time, making Liverpool one of the most consistently active filming locations in the UK outside London today.

A city built for the camera

Liverpool has quietly become one of Britain’s busiest filming cities outside London, and it’s not by accident. The combination of largely intact Georgian and Victorian streetscapes, grand Edwardian civic architecture, atmospheric docklands and a genuinely film-friendly council and production infrastructure has made it a go-to stand-in for other cities and eras on screen — sometimes convincingly disguised, sometimes recognisable to anyone who knows the city well. If you’ve watched much British or American period drama in the last decade, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Liverpool without realising it.

Why this matters beyond simple fandom

Screen tourism interest in Liverpool connects to something broader than individual fans seeking out their favourite show’s filming spots — it’s part of a wider, increasingly significant global travel trend where film and television directly influence destination choice and itinerary planning, a phenomenon tourism boards actively study and, in Liverpool’s case, actively support through promotional partnerships with major productions where possible. Recognising this as a legitimate, growing category of travel motivation, rather than a niche curiosity, helps explain why Liverpool’s tourism infrastructure has increasingly begun acknowledging and, at times, actively promoting its screen connections alongside its more traditional Beatles and football-focused marketing.

What “screen tourism” actually looks like in practice

For visitors new to the concept, it’s worth explaining what a film-location-focused visit to Liverpool practically involves, since it differs from more conventional sightseeing. Rather than ticketed attractions with dedicated visitor centres, screen tourism here mostly means recognising real streets and buildings that serve everyday functions (offices, residential buildings, civic institutions) but that happen to have appeared on screen — meaning there’s rarely a formal marker, plaque or ticket booth, and the experience is closer to a scavenger hunt using online research and general knowledge of the relevant productions than a structured museum visit. This makes it a genuinely flexible, low-cost addition to a Liverpool itinerary, but it does require a bit of self-directed research and realistic expectations about what you’ll actually find at street level.

Peaky Blinders’ Birmingham

Perhaps the best-known recent example: much of Peaky Blinders, nominally set in 1920s Birmingham, was actually filmed on Liverpool’s streets, with the Georgian Quarter and various docklands locations standing in for the Shelby family’s world. Stanley Dock and the surrounding warehouse district provided much of the show’s industrial backdrop, while some of the more elegant Georgian terraces doubled for period Birmingham streets that no longer survive in their original form. Fans of the show visiting Liverpool specifically for this connection should focus on the northern docks area and the Georgian Quarter, covered in more depth in our Georgian Liverpool guide.

Chicago, New York and beyond

Liverpool’s waterfront and civic buildings have repeatedly stood in for American cities, particularly 1920s and 1930s Chicago and New York, in productions ranging from major studio films to television. St George’s Hall and the wider civic quarter around Lime Street, with their imposing neoclassical architecture, have provided convincing period American courthouse and civic settings on multiple occasions, a role that fits naturally alongside the building’s own real history covered in our St George’s Hall guide.

Other notable productions

Beyond the headline examples covered here, Liverpool’s filming credits extend across a genuinely long list of British and international productions spanning decades — period dramas, contemporary crime series, comedies and prestige television have all made use of the city’s varied architecture at different points, often without the specific production receiving the same level of public attention as Peaky Blinders or the major franchise films. This steady, less headline-grabbing stream of production work is arguably a better indicator of Liverpool’s genuine, sustained appeal to the industry than any single high-profile show, since it reflects consistent, ongoing demand from productions across many different genres and budget levels rather than a handful of prestige projects alone.

Fantastic Beasts and the Wizarding World

The Fantastic Beasts franchise, an extension of the Harry Potter universe, filmed scenes in Liverpool, drawing on the city’s grand Georgian and Victorian architecture to help build its 1920s magical New York setting. Location scouts have repeatedly returned to Liverpool for exactly this reason — the density of well-preserved period buildings across a compact, filmable area is hard to match elsewhere in Britain.

Marvel and other franchise appearances

Beyond the DC-associated Batman productions, Liverpool has also featured in various Marvel and other major franchise productions over the years, drawn by the same combination of architectural variety and production-friendly infrastructure that attracts other big-budget filmmaking to the city. These appearances tend to receive less dedicated fan attention than the more visually distinctive Peaky Blinders or Fantastic Beasts connections, partly because superhero franchise filming often disguises its Liverpool locations even more thoroughly through digital effects and set dressing, making location identification a more specialist pursuit for the most dedicated fans rather than something casual visitors are likely to recognise unprompted.

Gotham City and the superhero connection

Liverpool has also stood in for Gotham City in Batman productions, its mix of grand civic architecture and atmospheric docklands offering directors a moodier, more varied palette than some more obviously “British” filming cities can provide. St George’s Hall and the wider Georgian Quarter have both featured in various superhero and comic-book adaptations over the years, alongside the city’s own more straightforward appearances as itself in British productions.

Stanley Dock and the northern docklands

Stanley Dock, a short distance north of the main tourist waterfront, has become one of the city’s most consistently used industrial filming backdrops, its cavernous 19th-century tobacco and bonded warehouses offering a raw, unrestored aesthetic that’s genuinely hard to find intact elsewhere in Britain. Beyond Peaky Blinders, the wider Stanley Dock complex has featured in numerous other period and contemporary productions needing dockland, warehouse or industrial settings, and its scale — the tobacco warehouse alone is one of the largest brick buildings in the world by footprint — gives productions room to work that more compact filming locations elsewhere in the city can’t match. It’s not generally open for casual walk-through visits in the way the Royal Albert Dock is, so location-spotting here is mostly a from-the-outside exercise rather than an interior visit.

The Cunard Building and civic grandeur

The Cunard Building at the Pier Head, one of the Three Graces, has also drawn film and television productions wanting a convincingly grand, Beaux-Arts-influenced interior and exterior for period settings, its scale and detailing lending itself to everything from formal government buildings to luxury period interiors depending on how a production dresses the space. Combined with St George’s Hall’s frequent use for courthouse and civic scenes, this cluster of grand early-20th-century and Victorian architecture around the city centre and waterfront gives Liverpool a genuinely unusual density of large-scale, filmable period interiors within a compact, walkable area — a large part of why productions keep returning here rather than treating a single Liverpool shoot as a one-off.

Liverpool playing Liverpool

Not every production disguises the city — Liverpool has also featured as itself in numerous British films and television series over the decades, from Beatles-era documentaries and dramatisations through to contemporary shows exploring the city’s football culture, music scene and working-class communities. This dual identity — sometimes Liverpool, sometimes a convincing stand-in for somewhere else entirely — is part of what makes location-spotting here rewarding for visitors with an interest in film and television production.

Music documentaries and Beatles-related productions

Beyond fictional productions using Liverpool as a stand-in for elsewhere, the city has also been the direct subject and setting of a long line of music documentaries, biopics and archival productions covering the Beatles and Liverpool’s wider music scene specifically. These productions, filmed largely as Liverpool playing itself rather than disguising the city, have used real locations — the Cavern Quarter, Penny Lane, Strawberry Field and the band’s childhood homes among them — extensively over the decades, contributing to the enormous existing body of screen material documenting these sites’ authentic history. This category sits somewhat apart from the “Liverpool disguised as elsewhere” tradition covered above, but it’s arguably just as significant to the city’s overall screen presence, and it’s covered in more depth within our dedicated Beatles sites content given how directly it connects to that history rather than general film location interest.

The Royal Liver Building and other waterfront doubles

The Royal Liver Building, one of the Three Graces and among Liverpool’s most recognisable landmarks in its own right, has itself doubled for other buildings and cities on screen on multiple occasions, its distinctive twin clock towers and Liver Bird statues making it instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Liverpool but adaptable, through careful framing, to stand in for generic grand early-20th-century architecture elsewhere when a production needs it to. The wider Pier Head waterfront, with its combination of grand Edwardian architecture and open riverside space, has provided flexible backdrops for productions needing everything from period New York harbourfronts to more contemporary urban waterside settings.

Liverpool’s studio infrastructure

Beyond location shooting, the wider Liverpool city region has developed genuine soundstage and studio infrastructure in recent years, allowing productions to combine location work in the city with controlled studio filming nearby rather than needing to relocate entirely between phases of production. This growth in fixed infrastructure — alongside the council’s location-friendly permitting processes — has been a deliberate part of the city region’s economic strategy, recognising screen production as a genuine growth industry worth investing in rather than simply a occasional, opportunistic source of location fees.

Why productions keep choosing Liverpool over rival cities

Beyond the architecture itself, Liverpool’s appeal to film and television productions rests on practical factors that aren’t always obvious to visiting fans: a genuinely film-friendly city council with established fast-track processes for street closures and location permits, a deep pool of experienced local crew built up over years of sustained production activity, and studio facilities in the wider city region that let productions combine location shoots with soundstage work without relocating entirely. This has created a positive cycle — more productions choosing Liverpool has built more local infrastructure and expertise, which in turn makes the city more attractive to the next production considering where to film. It’s a less romantic explanation than “the architecture is beautiful,” but it’s a large part of why Liverpool’s screen presence has grown so consistently over the past decade rather than being a one-off trend tied to a single popular show.

Combining location-spotting with other interests

Because so many of Liverpool’s key filming locations overlap with its historically and architecturally significant sites, location-spotting rarely needs to be a dedicated separate activity — a walk through the Georgian Quarter for its own sake, covered in our Georgian Liverpool guide, naturally takes in many of the same streets used for Peaky Blinders and other period productions, and a visit to St George’s Hall for its own architectural and historical merit, covered in our St George’s Hall guide, covers ground familiar to fans of its various on-screen appearances. This overlap is one of the more efficient ways to build a Liverpool itinerary that satisfies multiple interests without needing entirely separate excursions for history, architecture and film fandom.

What to know before chasing specific filming spots

Because film and television production is an ongoing, active industry in Liverpool rather than a fixed historical fact, specific filming locations for current or recent productions can be harder to pin down precisely than long-settled historical sites — productions don’t always publicise exact filming addresses, and streets used briefly for a single scene aren’t necessarily marked or celebrated afterward the way a genuine heritage site would be. Enthusiast websites and location-spotting communities online often do detailed work identifying exact spots from specific well-loved productions, worth searching out in advance if you have a particular show or film in mind rather than relying solely on this general overview.

Practical tips for location spotting

Most of Liverpool’s best-known filming locations cluster around the Georgian Quarter, the civic buildings near Lime Street and St George’s Hall, and the northern docks around Stanley Dock — all realistically walkable or a short taxi ride from the city centre. There’s no single dedicated film locations tour running permanently, so location-spotting is mostly a self-guided exercise; a general history and architecture walking tour, such as the Liverpool heritage, history and culture walking tour , can sometimes point out filming locations in passing even if it’s not the tour’s core focus, worth asking your guide about on the day. Because filming is an ongoing, active industry in Liverpool, streets around the city centre do occasionally close for productions — a minor inconvenience worth being aware of if you notice barriers or crew vans on an otherwise ordinary street.