Taggart’s Glasgow then and now scenes explored as area | UK News

One resident Glasgow skilled cycled tirelessly around the town for hours to observe down and doc every location where Taggart’s motion came about. The seemingly innocuous areas have been all scenes in the Eighties where gory murders and high pace chases have been filmed – and then televised for ITV.

The Astonishing Glasgow YouTube show lived up to its identify when its host pinpointed the precise location where Taggart’s first ever homicide sufferer, Eileen Valentine, was found. She’d been strangled with a ligature and dumped in the bushes – and views of the railway bridge peeking through the bushes helped lead him to the spot. Meanwhile, in episode 5 of the first sequence, viewers witnessed heart-pounding, vertigo-inducing scenes when Alan Cumming’s character Jamie was chased by police, with very gory penalties.

Wrongly accused of a homicide, he panics as police swoop in to arrest him at the scene of the Maryhill viaduct – and falls backwards off the bridge.

The spot is inaccessible now as the bridge path is “completely blocked off with razor wire and brambles”.

Another location which has been left just about unrecognisable is the Kingston Bridge – a distinguished landmark which featured in many episodes and was a great source of inspiration to show creator Tony Page.

The location, which is also the scene where Renton in Trainspotting steals a car battery, also leads to a close by set of steps by the bank of the River Clyde.

Detectives marched down the steps before discovering a haunting lifeless physique floating in the water in the second episode of sequence one, means back in 1983; the steps are scarcely used now, but would at one level have been a path for hundreds each day as they boarded the pedestrian ferry to cross the Clyde.

The sky-line appeared a lot fancier in those days – but one new curiously formed addition which has been added to the horizon close by at a price of £36 million is the SECC, also recognized as the Scottish Events Campus.

Then there’s Taggart’s famed Gondola Bar – and the most important change about Partick Bridge Street, where it was situated, is the entire destruction of St Simon’s Parish Church after an arson assault.

Since the show’s 1983 filming periods for its debut season, new roads and cycle paths have been constructed, and there’s even a new nature reserve – but while many places are recognisable, some still appear unchanged by the passage of time.

They embody a cottage just off Maryhill Road, where somebody in episode 4 was brutally murdered and dumped in a bathtub in the storage.

There’s also a mural of a enormous solar surrounded by tiny clouds, which has survived for at least 43 years – and it is seen from the situation where character Douglas tries to rob a phone-box before stabbing a BT employee in the following scuffle.

Finally, the Maryhill Canal might have ended up fully stuffed in by a four-lane motorway – but locals stood sturdy in their opposition to it and authorities caved and deserted their plans.

Reflecting on this is especially poignant in the context of immediately’s Britain, with Labour having just introduced plans to construct over the inexperienced belt.

For more Taggart places, take a look at the YouTube sequence Astonishing Glasgow – where, hilariously, the film-maker even witnessed real-life crime in real-time while researching the places of the fictional model.