Sweenealogy – All Over The Manor Part 3

We left Part 2 just outside Julie’s in Holland Park, having just failed to apprehend the mystery diner who’d met up with Frankie Little. This trip spent quite a bit of time bouncing about between episodes 9 and 11 of Season 2, and it was back to the former for the next location.

Episode Context – S2E09, “Stay Lucky, Eh?”

Back to Tony Kirby, and the case of his unrewarded 2 grand, the missing loot from the job he financed, and the errant Tyson and Jenner. There are a number of scenes set inside Kirby’s house – very swanky digs fitted and furnished with the best that ill-gotten gains have to acquire, as you’d imagine; however, there weren’t any exterior establishing shots or similar until quite late on in the story. At this point, a set up has been instigated by The Squad wherein the mystery robber who swooped in and took the spoils is known to be heading back to the theatre where Herbie Mew – the little bird who’s been tweeting him information on the jobs being pulled, but who now refuses to have anything more to do with him since it turned ugly (shooters and so forth) – works. Regan and co. make a tip-off to Kirby’s crew that the thief who took ‘their’ money will be there – so Kirby and co. tool up and head to the theatre. We see them leaving Kirby’s house, on Hillsleigh Road just off Holland Park Drive.

Next up was a bit of a walk North, through Notting Hill in the direction of Westbourne Park. We were to return to the exploits of Tyson and Jenner and co. fairly soon; but first of all, a detour into a ‘new’ episode for me.

Episode Context – S2E10, “Trojan Bus”

We’ve not been there yet in any of my travels, but an earlier episode in S2 sees two young Aussie tearaways – MacGruder and Stackpole (Col and Ray to their associates) – pull a series of audacious armed robberies of Krugerrands before escaping the country. All flash and swagger, they are convinced they have the measure of the British law enforcement, and are back on our soil – this time to pull off an art heist. Independent art dealer Leonard Geisler has a rare self-portrait by Goya, that he’s about to sell to a buyer from one of Europe’s big-league galleries. Tipped off about the painting by his assistant, Nancy (“there’s got to be a bird… there’s always a bird”), the Aussie Boys test Geisler’s credulity by first pulling an old “buy-back” scam on him; when that goes off as expected, they are green-lit for the real job of snatching the painting, which they plan to sell to a buyer from Amsterdam.

Geisler’s art gallery is on Ledbury Road (1), next door to ‘The Walmer Castle’ pub, from where Col and Ray observe his comings and goings:

You can see that the pub has had the inevitable spruce-up; nice to see the old tiles still intact, though. On the top pair of pictures, a lot has obviously changed; the basements have been opened up, the frontages have been redone, and the door to Number 60 which served as the gallery entrance (from which Col is exiting on the left-hand shot) has been moved to the right of the premises, and is now directly adjacent to the pub.

In the meat of the episode, Col and Ray steal a bus to snare Geisler – who always catches the same one from outside the gallery when travelling to appointments. In the first pair of shots, they observe Geisler from the pub as he heads to the bus stop:

For the job itself, Nancy makes sure to shoo Geisler out of the gallery with the Goya in time to catch ‘his bus’ (she’s convinced him that nobody would suspect a little old man with a brown paper package is carrying anything valuable) – the bus in question being the stolen one that Col and Ray are driving up Ledbury Road from the South:

After that little interlude into Aussie territory (if you’re not now humming ‘Nice and Easy Does It’ to yourself, then clearly you’ve never met Col and Ray!) it was a short walk North to grab the final set of locations in this neck of the woods.

Episode Context – S2E09, “Stay Lucky, Eh?”

I said it wouldn’t be long before we were back on the trail of Tyson and Jenner, and here we are. Skef Warren and Kirby’s other henchmen have been out trying to unearth Tyson, who has been laying low since the ill-fated job. They catch up with him coming out of a newsagents on Talbot Road (2) – and Skef ‘persuades’ Tyson to join them in Kirby’s car to go for a little chat with Tony about the job.

The shots are all very closely cropped action, so it’s difficult to immediately tell from them that the ‘now’ shots are definitely the same place; you’ll just have to trust my meticulous research on that one 🙂

Once they’ve come to a gentleman’s agreement that Tyson will accompany them to see Kirby, the car drives off up Powis Terrace (3):

After this, I had just one more stop to make on what had already been a fairly epic first part to the day – another little walk further to the North to Aldridge Road Villas (4). Number 46 is where Jenner lives with his wife Liz; Regan and Carter have the place staked out, and see Tyson going to visit them, both to find out about Jenner’s treatment for the gunshot wound, and to report on what has happened between him and Kirby’s crew:

Again, we have some pretty closely-framed shots here, but you can definitely see that the door to number 46 is the same, just repainted black, Some of the original walls and railings are still intact, too – but the house on the corner that Tyson passes in the first pair of pics has obviously been largely demolished to make way for a far more modern ‘Grand Designs’ type affair.

With that, it was finally time to declare lunch; I walked the rest of the way up to Westbourne Park, and caught the tube via Paddington (and a quick stop there for a sandwich) back to Embankment for the final part of the day.