Forest of Dean - in The Media

In The Media

• Heavy metal band Black Sabbath rented Clearwell Castle to write and record their fifth album, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath in 1973. The band rehearsed in the castle dungeon for inspiration.
• In 1998 the area was on national news as it was going through a bad heroin epidemic and several young people fatally overdosed within a short period of time.
• Many TV and film projects have been filmed at Clearwell Caves, including the 2005 Christmas special of Doctor Who.
• In 2006, Coleford's St. John's Street was featured in a newspaper/magazine advert for the Renault Clio.
• Scenes from the 2007 film Outlaw were filmed in Coleford.
• The first and last episode of the first series of the television show Primeval featured and was filmed in the Forest of Dean.
• The novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contains a passage that is set in the Forest of Dean. It also appears in the first of two films of the same name.
• The autobiography of WWII veteran Colin Hall "Dropped In It" includes a chapter on his struggle to provide for a new wife and son in the undeveloped Forest of Dean in the late 1940s.
• BBC Big Read 2003 Britain's favourite book winner "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien was championed by the survival expert Ray Mears, who presented the book from Puzzlewood.
• The area has frequently provided film locations for the BBC. The early 1980s science-fiction drama Blake's 7 used several locations; the Russell T Davies reboot of Doctor Who has also filmed in the area; Blake's 7 was conceived and produced by Terry Nation, who also wrote many Doctor Who scripts and created the Daleks. More recently, scenes from the BBC drama series Merlin were shot in the Forest.
• The BBC nature programme Springwatch filmed the wild boar in 2009.
• Parts of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven (1978) take place, and were filmed, in the Forest of Dean. His autobiographical play "Blue Remembered Hills" is set in the Forest of Dean.
• In January 2011, 3000 protesters gathered at a rally organised by Hands off our Forest, to protest against the UK Government's proposed sale of public forests.