Where is the refinery in tin star?

A modern-day western, it’s set in the fictional town of Little Big Bear, a sleepy place encircled by jagged snow-capped peaks. Tim Roth stars as British detective turned small-town sheriff Jim Worth, who’s moved his family to Canada for a fresh start, only to have his peace shattered by the opening of an oil refinery and a personal tragedy.

The Channel 4 drama was filmed in the province of Alberta, which is famous for two things: its mountains and its lucrative deposits of oil and natural gas.

The cast spent seven months living in Alberta’s biggest city, Calgary, which is the eastern gateway to the Rocky Mountains.

The city’s nickname is “cowtown”, and the actors discovered why a month after arriving. Every July it hosts the Calgary Stampede, a huge rodeo that bills itself “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.”

More than a million visitors come to see the bull- and bareback-riding, barrel-racing, steer-wrestling, chuckwagon races, country and rock concerts, spectacular grandstand shows and a parade.

You can fly direct from London to Calgary with Air Canada and low-cost Canadian airline WestJet. It’s best to book flights and accommodation early if you want to see 2019’s Stampede, which will be 5 to 15 July.

Every day of filming would begin with a scenic road trip to the show’s picture-perfect locations. Lying 50km south of downtown Calgary is the pretty town of High River, which doubled as Little Big Bear.

Sheriff Worth resides in a gorgeous riverside home in Kananaskis Country, a mountain playground made up for more than 50 interconnected parks and recreation areas.

On their first morning, the cast was briefed on how to deal with foraging bears. There were also crew members whose job was to watch the trees for mountain lions – the local name for cougars – which have been known to climb trees and drop on tourists in that neck of the woods.

In the drama, Sheriff Worth’s daughter hates the fact that her parents have moved to the middle of nowhere. Actress Abigail Lawrie plays her and was more impressed: “The landscape was like nothing I’d ever seen before – everything was so lush and on such an epic scale. The air was so fresh.”

Next door to Kananaskis Country is Alberta’s premier attraction: Banff National Park, which offers soaring peaks, glaciers, lakes and superb fauna-spotting. It wasn’t a filming location, but the cast and crew explored it during their days off.

For six months of the year, the Canadian Rockies are blanketed in snow and become a haven for adrenaline junkies. The cast’s contracts banned them from skiing in case they broke a limb, but they could still enjoy Banff’s hot springs.

Their shadow finds parallels in a dark crime wave that’s stealing into the sleepy locale thanks to the arrival of a new oil refinery.

The ensuing trouble gives Tim Roth’s recovering alcoholic cop Jim Worth plenty to be driven to drink about.

Here’s everything you need to know about the new show.

1. The plot follows a policeman who's new to the area and battling a wave of organised crime

Roth plays Jim Worth, a former London Met policeman with lots of demons to be drawn out of the course of the series.

His dark side is more literal than most though, in that he struggles to subsume his undercover alter-ego Jack.

It’s a persona that goes hand in with his alcoholism which he has under control, for now.

Worth has upped sticks and moved his family from London to the remote town of Little Big Bear.

At first he finds the serenity he seeks but it’s shortlived, as large oil refinery rumbles into town bringing with it comedy villain CEOs and a wave of gang crime.

2. Christina Hendricks plays a senior employee at North Stream Oil

Worth isn’t the only one grappling with inner conflict. Hendricks is ex-journalist Elizabeth Bradshaw who after years of criticising the oil industry decides to try and improve it from the inside.

Her intentions are honourable but with corruption all around and the strength of her own ambition testing her morals, will she manage to stay true to her cause?

3. The fictional town of Little Big Bear merges two Canadian locations

Tin Star’s town scenes are filmed in High River, where the Rocky Mountains are visible in the background but aren't quite as imposing as the producers had hoped. So they sought out a second filming location, Waterton, a tiny town on the outskirts of the Glacier National Park.

However, Waterton didn’t have the infrastructure to support a 250-strong film crew, which meant the location’s mountain backdrop had to be superimposed onto the High River town scenes, not – thanks to skilfull VFX – that you’ll be any the wiser when watching.

4. It’s written by 28 Weeks Later’s Rowan Joffe

Tin Star is Joffe’s first TV series since 2004. In the intervening almost 15 years he’s worked on films like 28 Weeks Later, The American and Brighton Rock.

Joffe also has a directing credit on the series and says episodes will take viewers on ‘labyrinthine journeys of discovery’.

“With a background of movie screenwriting, it’s been an ambition of mine to author an epic piece of cinema in a long-series format,” he said in a statement.

Jim has a gut-wrenching past…thanks to his former dealings as a London undercover detective. No matter how hard he tries to bury the hatchet it still keeps chasing him and now it also affects his family of four who recently moved to a small town in the Canadian Rockies.

Jim Worth works as a police chief in the small town’s Little big bear and tries to put behind his dark past and move ahead. This doesn’t seem to work as his past comes in front when he gets to know about the local oil company chief who is hell-bent on ruining his life along with his family’s. The major twist must be Jim’s alter ego which comes into service right when his family’s in danger and fights them.

All the story’s twists and turns run around the oil country of Canada which got the viewer’s interest tied up till the end. The show’s season one has seen a spike in viewers response in regards to content and unconventionality. The show turned out to be one of the biggest hit drama series from Star Atlantic.

The legit ensemble which includes Tim Roth, Christina Hendricks, Genevieve O’Reilly, Abigail Lawrie, and many other star casts has added advantage. After season 1 premiere in September 2017 had a good run, the creators introduced another season which premiered in Jan of 2019 and the last and final season- S3 of the drama series hit the screens in December 2020. The final season’s filming mostly took place in England’s Liverpool.

Season 1,2 key locations

The crime drama series filming locations were mostly in and around the area of Calgary, Alberta. The creator chose this location and concomitantly implied a western touch in the series of episodes. A few of the bests were shot at Calgary by the western filmmakers. The creators engaged a pro location analyst and manager Jason Nolan. He has had a lot of hit films with rocky lands and mountains to his credit including the crime drama Tin Star.

The series’ small town, Little Big Bear is set in parts of western Canada and also involved several locations from Calgary. The first 2 seasons locations are filmed in the south of Calgary, 33 miles away – High River. One of the key locations in the police station which in fact is “the Museum of the Highwood”. Many shots and segments were even filmed out on the streets, local areas, and schools, and a few scenes were filmed beside a church (St Benedict Church).

In High River, an unused building is converted into a bar for the series’ location, The town bar, Randy’s which can be seen in the show. Many other scenes which include police station segments and hotels set up were shot in the other floors of the same building. As it seems easy peasy to us, the viewers its not always so says the creator and location manager of the show.

Finale location challenges

The biggest challenged they faced was while deciding the location for Jim’s riverside house with a picturesque landscape. Jason Nolan proved his skill and talent on this one too by hunting for a perfectly desired property in the southwest of Calgary, close to the west of Bragg Creek in Kananaskis Country. The On-site house was built by the production designer and the crew.

Now comes the savage finale set up of season 1. The disastrous segments of the season end were filmed on The Moose Mountains Eastside, it takes place on a ridge above 7500ft and sparks the finale, and marks the series Tin Star’s superiority. Due to the change in the climate temperatures which go as low as -35ºC, the mood of the scene was perfectly set and shot.

Season 2’s prime locations include the oil company, home of the former PR of the company-Elizabeth Bradshaw. The scenes related were shot in a house on a shore connecting Calgary and High River. The house in the series was seen having frozen pipes which are quite different from the actual one.

The last and final season of the series was all set and shot in Liverpool, England. The season was premiered in December with its final episode aired on 24th December 2020.

The building of the North Stream Oil company in S01E10 is the East Tower of Eighth Avenue Place in Calgary (pictured). In S02E01, the exteriors of this company's headquarters were filmed at Suncor Energy Centre on Avenue SW. The oil refinery was all done with CGI effects.