Yorkshire film and TV shows including The Syndicate, All Creatures Great and Small and Gentleman Jack returning in 2021

While various productions have been halted over the last year, a number of projects filmed in the region are to return with broadcasts this year.

Exact transmission dates are unavailable in a number of instances - if a show is being filmed this year it may not air until later - but many details can be reported.

Television:

Historical drama, mockumentaries, modern crime capers and more made in the region - a number with the help of Screen Yorkshire - are on their way.

And celebrated Yorkshire talent such as Sally Wainwright and Kay Mellor will see their work return.

The Syndicate

Filming for Leeds television writer Kay Mellor's fourth series of The Syndicate was held up last year but viewers can expect it to hit screens some time in 2021.

The latest story is about a syndicate of low paid kennel workers who think they have won the lottery but have been robbed of their ticket.

"The chase to confront the culprit takes us to the wealthy French Riviera where the young syndicate find themselves well out of their depth," said Mellor.

The cast was announced last year. Along with Neil Morrissey, star of Line Of Duty, Unforgotten and Good Karma Hospital, the series will feature Emily Head (The Inbetweeners, Emmerdale), Taj Atwal (Line Of Duty, In The Club), Katherine Rose Morley (Thirteen, Last Tango In Halifax), Kieran Urquhart (The North Water, Vera) and introduces Liberty Hobbs (Grey’s Anatomy) in her UK debut.

Ackley Bridge

Series four of the Yorkshire-based coming-of-age Channel 4 drama is set to return.

Numerous locations in Halifax have been filmed to depict the fictional town of Ackley Bridge, whose school plays a central role in efforts to unite the divided white and Asian communities.

Additional filming locations in Leeds and Bradford were also used throughout the first three series.

Gentleman Jack

Sally Wainwright's historical drama about Halifax's 19th-century industrialist Anne Lister for the BBC and HBO, starring Suranne Jones, became a hit around the world after the first series aired and fans are waiting for more this year.

Halifax's Shibden Hall, Lister's actual former home, is the main location for the programme, while Bradford and Huddersfield have been used too.

Filming took place in York in November, however.

The cast and crew were seen at locations in the precincts of York Minster, Fairfax House, College Green and the Castlegate area.

Fairfax House, a Georgian merchant's house on Castlegate, was once a gentlemen's club and has been owned by the York Civic Trust, who operate it as a museum, since the 1980s.

It featured in the first series of Gentleman Jack as the interior of Lister's former lover Vere's London home.

The Great

This comedy drama about Catherine the Great, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, was made by Tony McNamara, the a writer and producer known for The Favourite (2018).

It has been airing on Channel 4 over recent weeks after some scenes were shot at Castle Howard near York.

The show depicts how a woman living in rural Russia during the 18th century who is forced to choose between her own happiness and the future of Russia, when she marries an Emperor.

Catherine the Great was Empress of All Russia from 1762 until 1796, making her the country's longest-ruling female leader.

She took power following a coup that overthrew her husband and second cousin, Peter III.

Meet The Richardsons

A second series of the mockumentary, filmed in Hebden Bridge, is due to land this year on the UKTV Dave channel.

It stars husband and wife comedians Jon Richardson, from Mytholmroyd, and Lucy Beaumont, from Hull, as fictionalised versions of themselves discussing their lives.

Various comedians and celebrities make cameos in the show.

In August last year it was announced that an eight-episode second series would hit screens in 2021.

Peaky Blinders

The sixth and likely final series of Peaky Blinders, the hit BBC gang drama that got under way with help from Screen Yorkshire, has started production.

Yorkshire locations have been used extensively through the various series, including: Bradford City Hall, Little Germany, Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, Newby Hall, Saltaire, Bolton Abbey, Undercliffe Cemetery and the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds.

Cillian Murphy plays the main role of Tommy Shelby, while Hollywood legends such as Oscar-winning Adrien Brody have travelled to Yorkshire to film the show - a number of his scenes were shot in City Hall in Bradford.

Creator Steven Knight this month wrote on the show's website, saying: "After the enforced production delay due to the Covid pandemic, we find the family in extreme jeopardy and the stakes have never been higher.

"We believe this will be the best series of all and are sure that our amazing fans will love it. While the TV series will be coming to an end, the story will continue in another form."

The show is not likely to return to screens before the end of 2021, reports the Mirror.

All Creatures Great and Small

Viewers charmed by the hugely successful Channel 5 remake of James Herriot's All Creatures will be pleased to know a second series films this year.It became the broadcaster's highest rated drama commission everin 2020 after the BBC reportedly declined an opportunity to air the show.

Filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales included Grassington, where cast and crew will return as it double for the fictional Darrowby.

Fans can expect more heartwarming and humourous adventures of James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) as he joins his unconventional mentor, Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West), matriarch of Skeldale House Mrs Hall (Anna Madeley), Siegfried’s errant brother Tristan (Callum Woodhouse), and independent local farmer’s daughter Helen Alderson (Rachel Shenton), alongside a an ensemble of farmers, animals and townsfolk living in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s.

Anne Boleyn

A so-far unnamed Channel 5 drama on Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII (and first of the two of his six spouses to be executed), filmed at least partly in Yorkshire, is in the works.

According to The Radio Times, "the new series will go against the traditional style of a period drama by showcasing the story as a psychological thriller examining the final months of the Tudor Queen’s life from her perspective".

Jodie Turner-Smith, known for her role in 2019 film Queen & Slim, will play the lead, while I May Destroy You star Paapa Essiedu is also on board.

A transmission date has not been announced.

Film:

Uncertainty surrounds the release date of may films at the moment because of the pandemic's effect on cinema openings and productions.

But there are a number of movies linked to Yorkshire set to hit the silver screen this year.

The Duke

The Duke, starring Academy Award winners Dame Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent, premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September but has not yet gone out on general release.

Based on a remarkable true story and also starring Fionn Whitehead and Matthew Goode, the feature is directed by Roger Michell (My Cousin Rachel, Notting Hill).

Production came to Bradford, where Dame Helen attended a show at the Alhambra during her stay, and Prime Studios in Leeds.

The film depicts how in 1961 Kempton Bunton, a 60-year old-taxi driver, allegedly stole Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London - it was the first, and remains the only, theft in the institution's history.

Bunton sent ransom notes saying that he would return the painting on condition that the government invested more in care for the elderly - he had long campaigned for pensioners to

receive free television.

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

The big screen adaption of the story about a Yorkshire teenager who wants to be a drag queen has been a long time coming but is expected this year.

A BBC3 documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, aired in 2011.

It showed Jamie Campbell, from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, getting ready to go to the prom and making his debut as a drag act, under his stage name, Fifi la True.

Sheffield-born theatre director Jonathan Butterell approached Jamie about a year later for his permission to create a show that was written by Doctor Who scriptwriter Tom Macrae with music by Dan Gillespie Sells of band The Feeling.

The musical premiered at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in February 2017 and later transferred to the West End before being nominated for a string of Laurence Olivier Awards.

The feature film adaptation retains the Sheffield link, having been filmed in South Yorkshire last year.

It stars Max Harwood as Jamie New, Lauren Patel as Pritti Pasha and veteran actor Richard E Grant as Hugo Battersby / Loco Chanelle.

Censor

This horror was shot in the region, according to Screen Yorkshire, and is due to be released in the US later this month.

The synopsis on IMDB reads: "After viewing a strangely familiar video nasty, Enid, a film censor, sets out to solve the past mystery of her sister's disappearance, embarking on a quest that dissolves the line between fiction and reality."

It is directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, from Wales.