west end boys

Number 159 Routemaster bus is parked outside Savile Row tailors Culver & Hound, where a billboard advertises ‘Dortman Electronics’ (“Bring The Magic Home With Cinema Stereo Sound”) nearby. We are unmistakably in early ’80s London, albeit reimagined in Manchester for the purposes of a new five-part drama. Russell T. Davies, saviour of Doctor Who and now creator of It’s A Sin, laughs that “to find 1980s London in London, we’d have had to shoot in one little corner of Soho…”

The show – named after Pet Shop Boys’ operatically defiant