The RCM on the BBC

Monday 7 July 2014

The Royal College of Music has recently been featured in two prime time BBC TV programmes.

The popular cookery competition Celebrity MasterChef and brand new BBC Drama The Honourable Woman were both broadcast at 9.00pm on Thursday 3 July, and both featured scenes filmed at the RCM.

In BBC One’s Celebrity MasterChef, four celebrities (Christopher Biggins, Charlie Boorman, Tina Hobley and Jason Connery) take on a catering challenge at the RCM. After a briefing from MasterChef presenters John Torode and Gregg Wallace in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, the celebrities work alongside chef Steve Robertson to create lunch dishes for 120 RCM students and staff - including the Director of the RCM Professor Colin Lawson. The programme also featured an interview with Professor Lawson and scenes filmed in the RCM Library, Parry Rooms, Studios, and Britten Theatre, where vocal students were working with Kasper Holten, Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House.

At the same time on BBC Two, the RCM was the location for an important scene in the first episode of The Honourable Woman, featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal. The episode shows Gyllenhaal’s character Nessa Stein attending a concert in the RCM’s Britten Theatre, with scenes filmed in the main entrance of the RCM, the foyer and backstage of the Britten Theatre, and in the auditorium itself. Unfortunately the fictional concert doesn’t go quite to plan…

Both programmes are available to watch now on BBC iPlayer