Binge-watching The Crown during summer holidays has quickly become a family tradition – perhaps something to do with my Northern Irish grandparents being staunch Royal family supporters.

So, with the arrival of season two in early December, it wasn’t long before we had soaked in the tales of the Royal history – but little did we realise that South Africa had a starring role, reports Radio Times:

Covering the years 1956 to 1963 – essentially the years that Anthony Eden and then Harold Macmillan were Prime Minister – season two’s storylines take in the Suez Crisis, Prince Philip on a rollicking six-month global flirtfest and the Queen’s state visit to Ghana.

It’s a globetrotting extravaganza, but it was mainly shot in just one country: South Africa.

Because we’ve got it all:

Philip’s tour – in effect a brief exile amid rumours of an affair with a ballet dancer – sees him take the royal yacht Britannia through Bermuda, Tonga, up the Amazon, across Antarctica and to the Melbourne Olympics, where he’s honeytrapped by an attractive Australian journalist for a one-to-one interview.

And each of those scenes was shot in the Western Cape – here’s the extent of locations used:

• Cape Town doubled as Melbourne.
• Kogel Bay became a Tongan beach, where the crew of the yacht challenged locals to various sports.

• Hermanus’s new harbour became Bermuda’s King’s Wharf dock.
• Hermanus’ Old Harbour set the scene for where a young Prince Philip and his family flee their Greek royal residence on the island of Corfu.

• Arabella Hotel Country Estate acted as Bermuda’s Port Royal course.
• For deck scenes on Britannia, the crew travelled to Cape Agulhas:

[A]t the southernmost tip of the continent, they constructed a giant fake deck hanging out over the sea, providing a suitable backdrop for ocean-going scenes. The millpond sea behind doubled for everything from the Caribbean to the Antarctic Ocean.

• Philip’s journey up the Amazon River took place further east on the Keurbooms River (near Plett):

“Coming up that river in a tiny boat was a real joy,” says [Matt Smith’s].

“I loved filming in South Africa; it gave me an insight into Philip. He’s obviously an alpha. He’s on the horse riding into the battle, sword in hand. We can recognise that in the 40s and 50s no man would have knelt to his wife – so if she says you’ve got to give up your job and name, and the kids are taking my name… You can see how he’d say, ‘Hang on. I didn’t sign up for that.’”

• Fisantekraal Airfield – built in 1943 for a bomber squadron in the South African Air Force and now a private flying school – became an Egyptian airforce base under attack.
• Cape Town City Hall set the scene for “the rise of Egypt’s Colonel Abdel Nasser and key scenes in the deals and negotiations surrounding the slow collapse of British rule in Suez”.
• The Castle of Good Hope hosted much of Claire Foy’s (Queen Elizabeth’s) visit to Ghana – while South Africa’s verdant landscape provided the rest.

Yup.

Below is The Crown‘s season two trailer, just in case you’re now a little more intrigued than you were before you realised the Western Cape was basically the star of the show:

[source:radiotimes]