West Country Dialects - Television and Film

Television and Film

• Many contemporary pirate films feature stage versions of West Country accents. e.g. Treasure Island, Blackbeard the Pirate, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
• The film Hot Fuzz was filmed in Wells in Somerset and includes many examples of the dialect. One character's accent is so broad that he can only speak to the protagonist with the help of two successive interpretations from local police officers.
• Samwise Gamgee and Meriadoc Brandybuck, as played by Sean Astin and Dominic Monaghan respectively in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, both speak with a distinct West Country accent.
• The Little Britain character Vicky Pollard is supposedly from a fictional town called Darkley Noone, but speaks with an obviously Bristolian accent and makes reference to places around the Bristol area.
• The BBC series Poldark (aired in 1975–1977), based on novels by Winston Graham, is set in Cornwall; most characters speak with Cornish or West Country accents.
• In the ITV soap Echo Beach, set in a fictional Cornish town, a handful of characters have Cornish accents of variable accuracy.
• Time Team's Phil Harding speaks with an authentic Wiltshire accent.
• Holby City and Casualty are BBC hospital dramas set in the fictional city of Holby, which is approximated to Bristol, and many of the characters speak in a West Country accent.
• Doc Martin, an ITV series set in Cornwall, features an array of variable accurate West Country accents.
• Justin Lee Collins, comedian and presenter, speaks with a distinct Bristolian accent.
• Wheatley, one of the main characters in Portal 2, was voiced by Stephen Merchant, who speaks with a Bristol accent.
• The 1970s incarnation of the ITV series The Tomorrow People features the character of Tyso Boswell (played by Dean Lawrence), a Romani boy who speaks in a West Country accent.
• Hagrid from the Harry Potter franchise is noted for his distinct West Country accent.