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New series Jekyll and Hyde due to hit screens later this year stars include Tom Bateman and Richard E Grant

Yes, this is Rochester High Street, June 2015.

The road was transformed this week as television crews again decended on the town to continue filming a new series of Jekyll and Hyde.

ITV has commandeered several shops to transform it into an authentic 1930s London street scene.

Rochester High Street earlier this week.
Rochester High Street earlier this week.

The cast, including Tom Bateman and Richard E Grant, have also been shooting at Chatham’s Historic Dockyard and Fort Amherst.

Monday and Tuesday were taken up by the staff recreating shopfronts and removing any telltale modern signs such as burglar alarms and intercoms.

Meanwhile, actors were filming in the Historic Dockyard on night shifts before moving to Rochester on Wednesday.

The filming of Jekyll and Hyde.
The filming of Jekyll and Hyde.

The television production is an adaption of the original story by Robert Louis Stevenson and has been written by Fast Show comic and novelist Charlie Higson.

He told a TV conference last month: “It’s a superhero Jekyll & Hyde - about Dr Jekyll’s grandson, who doesn’t know anything about who he is or why he’s like he is.

“He can turn into someone else, nobody knows it’s him and he can do all the things he dreams about, so I thought there was a lot you could do with it that was new and exciting.”

Rochester High Street earlier this week.
Rochester High Street earlier this week.

Bateman, who played the lead role in the West End show of Shakespeare in Love, takes on the dual part of Robert Jekyll and Dr Hyde.

Grant, of Withnail and I and Downton Abbey fame, plays Sir Roger Bulstrode, boss of a secret government department, while ex-Coronation Street actress Natalie Gumede, a Strictly Come Dancing finalist in 2013, is Bella, Jekyll’s love interest.

Since first coming to Medway in February this year, crew and cast have also filmed at locations across Kent, including the Isle of Sheppey.

Starting tonight - Jekyll and Hyde
Starting tonight - Jekyll and Hyde

The programme is due to be screened on ITV in the autumn.

A documentary about the Battle of Waterloo, filmed at Fort Amherst with Sharpe actor Sean Bean, can be seen on TV this weekend. See page 35.

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