h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am often surprised when people from around the UK have heard of my small home town. It often features in geography textbooks because of a range of features within a small area. It sits on a narrow strip of land some 3 miles long on the side of a bay opposite Swansea, south Wales. The land is flat for about a mile and a half and then rises sharply to over 200m. Much of the land behind these hills is covered by pines planted by the Forestry Commission. The flat land contains the town, its motorway (carried on stilts above the town centre, and two large plants - a chemical works and a steel works. This range of features both rural and urban has always made it seem to me like an ideal place for filming.
The film "Twin Town" (1997) is credited as having been filmed in Swansea but almost half of it seems to have been in Port Talbot. The steel works has been used for film clips including scenes from "A Kiss Before Dying" (1991). "Darklands" (1997) was partly filmed there. Terry Gilliam also apparently got the inspiration for his film "Brazil" while watching a beautiful sunset from the beach next to the steel works!
The town has also appeared in TV commercials. The most recent is the Nescafe advert with the man with the afro that just keeps growing, even when he's in his car. Part of it is filmed in Llywelyn Street which sits almost beneath the towering stilts of the M4 motorway. This same street features at the start of "Twin Town".

Port Talbot also has two other links to film - the actors Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins are from the town.