Moonflower Murders has arrived on our screens at last, and along with some incredible acting, there's some seriously perfect locations - but where can they be found?
Back in 2022, TV audiences fell in love with Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland in Magpie Murders. Manville portrayed an editor given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway’s latest novel, and the ways this turn of events changes her life. The sequel, Moonflower Murders is now airing on BBC One, and is the second novel in author Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland series to be adapted for television - and it picks up where Magpie Murders left off.
The six-part drama follows Susan, who has left publishing and is living in Crete with her boyfriend, Andreas. However, it's not long before Susan hears of a murder committed at a British country hotel eight years previously. Alan Conway had visited the hotel and written a novel based on what happened there. Cecily Treherne, a young woman working at the hotel, read the book and believed the wrong man had been arrested - and now she's disappeared. Viewers have been asking where the series is filmed, and we recently revealed where Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light filmed, and spots featured in Channel 5's The Hardacres. We can also reveal the locations featured in Moonflower Murders.
Where is Moonflower Murders filmed?
Moonflower Murders filmed in Dublin and Crete. As part of the series is set in Crete, the crew were excited to film on the actual island. Found in the east of the island, the city of Agios Nikolaos takes centre stage in the series, while some scenes were also filmed around the town of Schisma Eloundas.
The hotel standing in for the Hotel Trifilli has not been identified, but the series creators have spoken out about how they felt when they found a hotel with just the right facade for filming the hotel scenes. Speaking to Radio Times, series producer Suzanne McAuley sayid, "We literally found this hotel that couldn't have been more perfect for the script."
She added, "He [Anthony Horowitz] was then able to see the geography of where we were going actually shoot a lot of our Greek scenes. We were able to doctor the script to actually match, and it just became more and more fun."
Author Anthony Horowitz shared his feelings on the hotel used for the Hotel Trefilli, and his tiny cameo in the series. He says, "It’s hidden just off the main road in its own little cove, and it is the most extraordinary place. I do hope that our show will help it, because actually it needs a little help. It is a little bit tired, perhaps not quite as beautiful as our wonderful cinematographer makes it. But it was a joy to be there, and the eagle-eyed viewers might just notice the author of this series—that is to say, me—I won’t say walking, or even tiptoeing, through a scene, because I do neither…but I am there."
In Dublin, Howth Castle stood in for Branlow Hall, the Suffolk hotel in which a man was murdered and Cecily goes missing from. Further prominent scenes shot in Ireland were filmed in the village of Enniskerry in County Wicklow. Enniskerry has been used many times previously as a filming location, featuring in Disenchanted, The Tudors, and Disenchanted.
The castle has roots in medieval history, and visitors are able to book walking tours around the building and estate, which also has a cookery school within the grounds. Elsewhere around Dublin, the production crew were found filming around various neighbourhoods, and some viewers might recognise landmarks including the Samuel Beckett Bridge, O’Connell Bridge, and The Custom House in some scenes.
Moonflower Murders: Cast
- Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland
- Tim McMullan as Atticus Pünd
- Adrian Rawlins as Lawrence Treherne / Lance Gardner
- Rosalie Craig as Lisa Treherne / Melissa James
- Pooky Quesnel as Pauline Treherne / Maureen Gardner
- Mark Gatiss as Frank Parris / Oscar Berlin
- Daniel Mays as Locke / Chubb
- Conleth Hill as Alan Conway
- Pippa Bennett-Warner as Madeline Cain
- Alexandros Logothetis as Andreas Patakis
- Will Tudor as Aiden MacNeil / Algernon Marsh
- Rupert Evans as John Spencer
- Thomas Coombes as Derek Endicott / Eric Chandler
- Joanna Bacon as Gwyneth Endicott / Phyllis Chandler
Lesley Manville has spoken out about her character, Susan, being someone who loves being stylish and what that means to her. The actress said, "We created her as a woman who unashamedly enjoys her wardrobe… And I love the fact that a woman can be brilliant and intelligent and vibrant and thoughtful and provoke all kinds of conversation, and also be very interested in her own personal style, which can often be seen as something that’s quite slight in a person.
"Isn’t it a bit fickle just to be interested in your clothes? But I personally, as Lesley, don’t think that’s the case. I happen to love clothes, and I don’t think it diminishes anything about my personal integrity or intelligence. And I think Susan feels exactly the same way."
