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Crystal Palace Park is electrified to get a bit of The Power

Not since the days of Michael Caine and The Italian Job has such a large filming crew used Crystal Palace Park as a location

The race track around the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace has been transformed this week into a trailer park for location shooting of a blockbuster television series.

Amazon Prime are adapting Naomi Alderman’s prize-winning novel The Power into a 10-part action series that features Heather Agyepong, Halle Bush, Pietra Castro and Rob Delaney (among others).

Dozens of trailers drove into Crystal Palace Park after the bank holiday, and have set up camp for what looks like a lengthy shoot.

Filming is getting underway for a 10-part TV series

Our loyal reader strolled past the Jubilee Stand and sports hall this morning and their pictures show dozens of trailers set up for the series’ stars and crew.

Not since Michael Caine and the crew from The Italian Job more than 50 years ago has the park been used for such an extensive piece of filming.

The Power had been due to be filmed in Canada last year, but was postponed because of coronavirus. Since then, Hollywood star Tim Robbins has been brought into the cast.

The series is to be directed and produced by Reed Morano, the director of the first three episodes of the acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale, which itself was based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, Alderman’s literary mentor.

The Washington Post praised Alderman’s novel as “one of those essential feminist works that terrifies and illuminates, enrages and encourages”.

Alderman won the 2017 Women’s Prize for Fiction for The Power, a science fiction novel where women are the dominant gender after having developed the ability to release blasts of electricity – the power – from their fingers.

It is not certain, although it seems unlikely that there will be a line in the script that echoes Crystal Palace Park’s previous piece of cinematic fame: “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

In the context, I might just work, though…



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