London Underground in popular culture
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The London Underground has long provided inspiration in various areas of popular culture.
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[edit] Film and television
Filming is now managed all over the system but most commonly takes place at stations like Aldwych (a disused tube station), formerly on the Piccadilly Line, or the non-operational Jubilee Line complex in Charing Cross. The Waterloo and City Line has occasionally been used for filming as it is closed on Sundays.
The London Underground Film Office handles over 100 requests a month which proves that this iconic brand is now more important than ever to film makers producing a film in the Capital.
- The 1926 film The Lodger was the first feature directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in which he makes a cameo appearance as a passenger on a tube train.
- The 1928 film Underground, directed by Anthony Asquith, is a murder mystery set in the tube, much of which was shot on location in London Underground stations and on trains.
- The 1967 film Quatermass and the Pit (U.S. title: Five Million Years to Earth) revolves around alien bodies and spacecraft being discovered in the fictional Hobbs End tube station.
- The 1968 Doctor Who serial The Web of Fear is set in the tunnels of the Underground and deals with an invasion by robotic Yeti. In the 1986 serial The Mysterious Planet, the Doctor and his companion discover an underground civilisation in the ruins of Marble Arch tube station on a future Earth.
- There is a sub-genre of horror based on subterranean humans living in disused sections of the London Underground and preying on any unlucky commuters they find. These include the 1972 film Death Line and 2004's Creep.
- The secret lab in the 1970s TV series The Tomorrow People was in a disused Underground station.
- In the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London, Tottenham Court Road Underground station is among the many London landmarks where the titular werewolf attacks.
- The 1987 film The Fourth Protocol features a double agent being followed on the Piccadilly Line between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park, although shot on the Jubilee line between Charing Cross and Green Park. Later in the film, Michael Caine takes his vengeance out on two racist yobs who are causing disruption in the carriage in which he is travelling.
- According to Kevin Kline's character Otto in the movie A Fish Called Wanda, the London Underground is a political movement.
- The 1998 film Sliding Doors shows two parallel universes, hinging on whether the central character (Gwyneth Paltrow) catches a particular Tube train or not.
- The 1999 film Tube Tales featured in nine stories based on true-life experiences of London Underground passengers
- Die Another Day (2002) features the fictional defunct Vauxhall Cross tube station.
- In the 2006 film V for Vendetta, Aldwych is used for some of the scenes in the film.
- Forthcoming productions The Good Shepherd (2006), Atonement (2007), and the new ITV Doctor Who rival, Primeval all included scenes shot at Aldwych.
Although not "filmed" as such on the Underground, there have been two animated children's television series set on and around it. The first was Tube Mice, a 1988 series concerning the adventures of a group of mice living on the Underground. The second was the 2006 series Underground Ernie, set on a fantasy version of the network and featuring a friendly Underground supervisor and his talking trains. There was also a 2004 animated short, also called Tube Mice, about mice who keep the Underground in order.
Also, the Tube has been used for many other major films including Bridget Jones' Diary I & II , Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Code 46, Agent Cody Banks II, Love Actually, to name just a few, as well as BBC dramas such as Spooks and Hustle.
[edit] Art
The Great Bear by Simon Patterson in 1992 was a modified Tube Map. "Adapting the official map of the London Underground, Patterson has replaced the names of stations with philosophers, actors, politicians and other celebrated figures. The title The Great Bear refers to the constellation Ursa Major, a punning reference to Patterson's own arrangement of stars. Patterson playfully subverts our belief that maps and diagrams provide a reliable source of information. "I like disrupting something people take as read", he comments." (from the entry by the Tate Gallery)
[edit] Music
- Amateur Transplants has written and performed a song, also called "London Underground" (see London Underground Song lyrics), which deals with many of the gripes commuters encounter while taking the Tube. This has also been incorporated into a flash animation.[1]
- Paul Weller of the band The Jam wrote the song "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight".
- Cry, the second single from Alex Parks, features scenes from Charing Cross and Green Park tube station in its video.
- Pete Townshend, in the video for Who Are You, had an encounter with the Sex Pistols in a bar in Soho. However, being very drunk, Townsend couldn't tell who the band were. Eventually, Townshend awoke outside the bar and was caught drunk by a police officer, but thankfully the cop was a fan and let him go. He then took the Tube back out of town.
- The 1950 song The Underground Train written and performed by Lord Kitchener describes the practical difficulties faced by post-war Afro-Carribbean immigrants to London in understanding the complexities of the tube network.
- The song Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks features the line, "Millions of people swarming like flies round Waterloo Underground".
[edit] Literature
- Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere and the BBC television production of the same name are set in a world connected to our own that parallels the structure of the London Underground.
- In the graphic novel "V for Vendetta", the main character's hideout is in an abandoned Underground station.
- In the novel Tunnel Vision, a young man must win a bet by travelling through every Underground station in nineteen hours. The book even features the famous tube map inside the cover and tube routes to headline each chapter.
- London Transports is a collection of short stories by Maeve Binchy concerned with the lives and activities of people travelling on the Central and Victoria lines.
- Geoff Ryman's novel 253 tells the story of each of the 253 passengers (plus the conductor) on the Bakerloo Line between Embankment station and Elephant & Castle.
- Alex Garland's short novel 'The Coma' begins with the main character being brutally assaulted on a late-night Tube train.
- In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore claims to have a scar in the exact shape of the London Underground map under his left knee.
[edit] Other
- The Underground features in the board games Scotland Yard, The London Game and On the Underground.
- A truly trivial game relating to the Underground is Mornington Crescent.
- One Stop Short of Barking - Uncovering the London Underground - a humorous guide book to travelling on the London Underground includes popular cultural references, history and tube etiquette.
- A less-advisable game is the Circle Line pub crawl, involving alighting at each station, visiting a pub, then travelling to the next. This is popular with New Zealand ex-pats.[citation needed]
[edit] External links
- London Underground Film Office
- Going Underground's - London Underground in Film and TV
- Nick Cooper's - London Underground in Film and TV
