Where was His Dark Materials filmed?

Read on for everything you need to know.

Series Two

As was the case for the first run of the show, the vast majority of the scenes in the second series were filmed in indoor studios, mostly at Bad Wold Studios in Cardiff.

The series' production designer and executive producer Joel Collins said of the studios, "This was a warehouse when I first came, it was being built into a studio. Part-built, no offices, no nothing. It's been a long journey, in the sense of Jane's belief in the show, in Wales, in the whole process.

"It's not just about the show, it's about believing in how to make it work here, and capitalise on all the talent here. We can make locations and actually bring in things here and not travel abroad where we don't need to and build mountains."

Cittàgazze

One of the most crucial sets for season two is Cittàgazze, the deserted city in another world that Will and Lyra both enter separately. This forms the backdrop for much of the series and was built entirely from scratch in the studio.

According to Collins, the process of researching for Cittàgazze was "exhausting" with the team looking at over 120 towns while deciding on the design of the city, including locations in France, Italy, Morrocco and Croatia.

Speaking about the set he said, "It's big, it's not huge. It's a big backlot set. But what's interesting is it's not just one big main street, which backlot sets sometimes are - it was a set to be lost in.

"I think, that's part of what I wanted to do. We were very lucky we had a central core, which was the tower. But I wanted everyone to be able to go down the street and get lost. If you can get lost in the street, then the camera can get lost - and you can suddenly make the town go from a certain size to massive."

He also explained while they didn't decide to shoot on location in a real city. "What town's going to let you take over the whole town to do a show, change lots of details, and own it for six months in summer?" he said.

"I worked out very quick while doing a lot of research that even if we found the perfect Cittàgazze - which would never be right because Cittàgazze has its own flavour - even if there was a place, it would be selling trinkets to tourists and toffees and coke to tourists and stuff. And you won't get in, other than one street for one week. So there was a practical consideration of being able to do that for real."

Other studio sets

While Cittàgazze is perhaps the most impressive set, it was not the only one built from scratch in the studio.

The Magisterium submarine, on which Katya the witch is tortured in episode one, was also built - with Collins noting that this set, "is quite brutalist...it's part of the tone of what the show is."

Furthermore, the place where the witches gather was also built in the studio, with a cloud pine tree erected as the centrepiece of this set. Collins said, "This is where their cloud pine comes from, and this is where they meet. It's obviously open studio lighting, and it's all a bit hairy - once the wind's in here, and the mist, and the beautiful moonlight it's quite magical.

Oxford scenes

While most of the series was shot at Bad Wold Studios, there was some location work as well, both in Oxford and Wales – to represent the scene shot in Will's Oxford.

In 2019, some fans spotted Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson filming at the Botanical Gardens in Oxford, while Plasturton gardens in Pontcanna in Cardiff was also used as the portal entrance between our world and Citagazze.

However, Mary Malone's lab, which is based in Oxford, was also filmed at Bad Wolf Studios – with the team building a quantum computer for the lab.

Speaking about this, Collins said, "We've built a version of the quantum processor, so it's the latest processing power. So what we're trying to do with Mary Malone is that the way she gets the information is by plugging into the most powerful technology that we have that's real, and it's probably going to be more relevant in the next two years."

He added that they'd nicknamed the quantum computer "chandelier" because of its appearance.

Series One

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, executive producer Jane Tranter explained why she had opted to shoot so much of the show indoors.

She said, “I always had a strong Spidey-sense that the way to do His Dark Materials was to do it indoors. And that because it's a fantasy world, you're not building Oxford you're building fantasy Oxford, you're not building the north you're building fantasy north. But it's not that far fantasy.

“It has to have a slightly different feel to it for an audience than just going out and shooting a snowy wasteland. And I always thought that the clue to everything was to almost turn in on ourselves. And make it all about the text and performance. And then let the people who do the rest of it, do the rest of it. And just really, really let them off the leash.”

Many of the most iconic locations from the books – such as Lord Asriel’s lab, the interiors of Jordan college, Bolvangar and Iofur’s palace – were filmed in the studio.

And set designer Joel Collins told RadioTimes.com it was hard to pick a favourite set from the series. "We get on a set, we’re almost finished and we ask ‘What’s your favourite set?’ and I say ‘I think this one is now,’ so it’s really fickle," he said.

But away from the studios, there were some locations that required going a little further afield…

Svalbard

The kingdom of the panserbjørne (aka the armoured bears) and King Iofur's palace were both, like Bolvangar, built entirely within Bad Wolf's studio complex in South Wales and augmented with CGI. Yep, even the icy glaciers!

"This is Iofur’s palace, which is in Svalbard, up a mountain," designer Joel Collins told RadioTimes.com while on set.

"He’s kind of humanised this world of polar bears – he’s living in a carved-out palatial cavern of gold and stone, with a whale bone throne and carvings of all their battles in gilt. And it’s all about his vanity."

Asriel's lab

The home and workspace for James McAvoy's Lord Asriel makes a significant appearance in the final two episodes of the series, though eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted it in the opening episode as well.

Like many of the sets, the lab - including its cliff-hugging exterior - were constructed in their entirety at Bad Wolf Studios in Cardiff.

"The nightmare of Asriel’s lab is, all I could do was rip it apart every time I put it together," Collins told RadioTimes.com.

"Because what I was trying to do was make it look like it had been ripped apart and re-built. Like you’d built a house out of Lego, smashed it, put it back together again badly, then smashed that, then put it together again badly."

Accordingly, key parts of the set - including the fireplace have an intentionally jagged, half-finished aesthetic, intended to suggest that Asriel wanted to complete construction as quickly as possible and turn his mind to higher matters.

Bolvangar

The chilling facility used by the General Oblation Board (aka the Gobblers) was actually built and filmed in its entirety within Bad Wolf's studio complex. Exterior shots of the building were achieved with VFX, while all the corridors, rooms and experimental labs were part of one large, interconnected set coated with fake snow and icicles (made from a special wax) in Cardiff.

"If you’re in a bear palace or Bolvangar, you’re in such crazy places that you have to make sure they pin into the feeling of where you’ve been to," set designer Collins told RadioTimes.com when we visited the halls of Bolvangar. "But they’re not places you could even begin to know."

Trollesund

Trollesund, a port town in the country of Lapland, doesn’t crop up until the fourth episode of the series– but the process of filming it was especially interesting. The crew built an entire town out of nothing in Crickhowell, near Abergavenny in South Wales.

"Trollesund was amazing," Dafne Keen, who plats Lyra in the series, told RadioTimes.com. "They built a whole town in the Valleys in the middle of nowhere – this whole northern fishing town which was supposed to be in Norway. It was amazing, they made ice with melted wax, sprayed things with fake snow - I don't know how they did it.

"We went quite a lot in the mountains of Wales and stuff, pretending it was the north, fake snow-spraying it in September."

And whatever parts of the set weren't possible to build were later added in using VFX, with the production team using drones to create a digital version of Trollesund to work on.

"Once the set was built, and it was finished, and the shoot was done, we drone-scanned in high detail and photogrammetry the whole set in the quarry," VFX art direction and pre-viz supervisor Dan May told RadioTimes.com.

"And then we had that set and we were able to connect up all our digital parts of that set. So we had additional buildings, cranes and boats and all those other things."

Oxford

Although the interiors of Jordan College were all shot at Bad Wolf Studios, the crew travelled to Oxford itself for the exterior shots, with New College moonlighting as Jordan. Other Oxford landmarks you can spot in the show include The Bridge of Sighs and The Botanical Gardens.

And the Oxford filming also marked an auspicious occasion – when original trilogy author Philip Pullman visited the set and met some of the cast for the first time.

"I mean, they said 'Philip's coming to set,' and I was like 'Help! SOS, someone save me'," Keen told RadioTimes.com.

"But then he came on set and he was so nice about it. He was saying that I'd done a great job, and he was very happy and stuff. As soon as he said that, I was quite chilled out."

Though of course, not every Oxford scene was actually filmed in Oxford, with some scenes - most notably when Lord Boreal (Airyon Bakare) travels to our own world - shot instead in Cardiff, with only B-roll shot in Oxford city centre.

So yes, that leafy Oxford suburb was actually in Pontcanna, Cardiff. The more you know...

Gyptian scenes

For scenes involving the Gyptians – a group of water travellers who live mainly on boats – filming was done on the River Severn, near Sharpness Docks.

Apparently, bad weather caused delays to shooting – again, demonstrating why Tranter was so keen to keep as much of the filming as possible away from the fickle Welsh weather.

"There have been some storms, and there have been some times when we're meant to have been outside with the Gyptians, and we've had to keep cancelling, and keep cancelling," she told us.

"Because every time we tried to do that scene we got blown away. But for a production that is as long as this one, we've had very little weather problems. But that has been because we've come into the studio after."

Other locations

A number of other locations across Cardiff and Bristol also show up in the course of the series – including a chase scene following a moving vehicle around the streets of Bristol and the Welsh Assembly Government foyer in Cardiff centre, which moonlights as a Magisterium building.

We’ll be keeping a look out for more locations as the series progresses.

Interviews by Huw Fullerton

Read more about the His Dark Materials cast (including Ruth Wilson's Mrs Coulter), the His Dark Materials release schedule, the His Dark Materials books and the His Dark Materials age rating.

His Dark Materials returns to BBC One on Sunday (8th November) at 8.10pm – check out what else is on with our TV Guide