Smash, bang, wallop... what a picture

Break in...

Break in...

Car parks are a magnet for the directors of TV and film crime thillers, who love staging shadowy meetings, trade-offs and all manner of nefarious activities in them. One of the most stylish series of the year has been Hugo Blick’s The Shadow Line. Enigmatic dialogue sequences, often in the backs of cars parked in wastelands, empty warehouses or on dark streets, were punctuated by moments of dynamic, sometimes unsettling, action.

A stand-out sequence involved a deliberate car crash inside a spiralling underground car park. Aware that they are being tailed, two criminals lure the following car down into a car park. The passenger jumps out, he lets the tailing car pass by, then breaks into a parked estate, releases its handbrake and pushes it into the driving aisle. His driver then forces the tail to reverse at speed back up the ramp straight into the roadblocking car. 

We think the car park used was the helical structure beneath Bloomsbury Square in London. Are we right?

ed.pr@landor.co.uk