Remote Scottish post office occupies central role in new Channel 4 series

Channel Four’s new TV series Murder Island has a post office and store in the remote Scottish Isle of Gigha in a central role as the postmaster, played by an actor, obviously, is one of the suspects in the mystery whodunit.

Made by STV Studios, the series starts today (October 5) at 9.30 pm after the Great British Bake Off.

The six-part series, written by renowned crime novelist Ian Rankin, is based around a twist-filled murder plot which will see members of the public take on the role of detective and enter into a murder mystery investigation. They have one nail-biting week to compete to find out if they’ve got what it takes to solve a murder.

Scripted filming took place at the post office, and the sleuths also often popped in to speak with real-life postmaster Joe Teale and his wife, Hannah, who also works in the shop, to tap into their local knowledge of the island.

To ensure that the residents of this remote, southern-most Hebridean island, could still get provisions and Post Office services, the production had to allow the shop and post office to open for set hours each day, so that the community were not inconvenienced.

“We had to ensure that the shop could still serve the community. There was lots of filming here,” Teale said.

“On one particular night there was filming at the post office and outside until 1am in the morning, with lots of action going on. They had huge amounts of lighting, so it looked like it was actually filmed during the day.”

The rugged beauty of the island attracts tourists, but the Isle of Gigha, which means God’s island could not accommodate everyone when filming took place as the population of the island nearly doubled with the ten actors, teams of wannabe detectives and production crew.

So, 42 camper vans had to come over by boat from the mainland, along with supplies to build a police station for the ‘detectives’ briefings.

Teale said: “Under normal circumstances the island would have been able to accommodate everyone, but this was filming during Covid restrictions and there had to be social distancing. It wasn’t families and couples coming over – it was more than 100 individuals who came across. It was not enough for them to have separate rooms, they all had to have their own bathrooms!

“When Ian Rankin wrote the story based on a remote Scottish island, he didn’t specifically have the Isle of Gigha in mind, but we have more facilities than many islands, some great buildings and beautiful landscape to provide an interesting setting for filming.

Teale added that the community is eagerly waiting for the series as they are still in the dark on the murder mystery.

“We have not seen the series ahead of time so people are wondering which parts of our island will be shown and who they may recognise. The Isle of Gigha community still don’t know who the ‘murderer’ was. We will have to watch the series, like everyone else to find out,” he said.