Pierce Brosnan has been talking locations, and MobLand's second season turns out to be a proper tour of Britain and beyond. The crime drama, created by Guy Ritchie and written by Jez Butterworth, brings back Brosnan and Helen Mirren as the ruthless husband-and-wife crime bosses Conrad and Maeve Harrigan, alongside Tom Hardy as fixer Harry Da Souza — and the new season spreads its wings well beyond north London.

Most interior work happens at Ealing Studios in west London, which opened in 1902 and remains the UK's oldest continuously working film studio. The streets tell the rest of the story. Brosnan filmed a Bentley chase through Kentish Town, near the Chalk Farm drama school where he trained (and where Hardy, Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender also studied). More glamorous scenes unfold at Scott's, the storied Mayfair seafood restaurant, plus Harley Street, Loulou's nightclub and the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

The opening episode is a standout: a bloody shootout staged at Oxford Stadium, the greyhound track on Sandy Lane in Cowley, standing in for the now-demolished White Hart Stadium. From there, the Harrigans return to their country pile near Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, filmed around Broadway in the winter months — a stretch Brosnan calls pure Christmas magic. He's clearly enamoured with the area's hotels too, singling out Dormy House as his favourite for its quiet charm, with nods to Soho Farmhouse and the stately Estelle Manor.

The season also goes abroad. The cast spent a week in Mallorca, where Brosnan — a painter in his spare time — visited Joan Miró's former studio, the Fundació Miró Mallorca. Closer to home, scenes with Eddie Harrigan and Gina Da Souza were shot on Tyrella Beach in County Down, Northern Ireland, hinting at the story's widening scope. Mirren has suggested future seasons could push further, with Italy — she lives in Puglia — on the wishlist.

For travellers, this is a ready-made itinerary of recognisable backdrops. You can book a table at Scott's, bet on the dogs at Oxford Stadium, wander Broadway's honey-coloured streets, or trace the Harrigan trail to a Mallorcan oceanfront hotel. Fans of the show get an unusually concrete map of where the drama happens.

Via Condé Nast Traveller UK