Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong

For the sake of completeness, here is a brief snippet of the junction in Central that marks the beginning of both Des Voeux Road and Queen's Road. I might be wrong, but the angle suggests this may have been snapped from somewhere around the former Hongkong Hilton (replaced in the mid-90's by the Cheung Kong Centre).

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Nathan Road, Mongkok

I'm currently revamping my Noble House posts and have also revisited some of the things I missed off the last time. I've also changed the date to 1988 because it appears that's when it was released in the US. However, the missing Standard Chartered Bank in many shots around Central actually place the filming at 1987 at the latest.

Anyway, here is one from Nathan Road in Mongkok that clearly shows a neon sign advertising the South China Theatre. It also happens to be one of the location seen in the red-coloured opening credits with Gordon Jackson's face superimposed over the top.

A quick look on the trusty Cinema Treasures website reveals that the South China Theatre was situated at 174 Portland St in Mongkok (the next road over). So this view is facing north and is where Soy Street intersects with Nathan Rd. Here is the current Streetview. Notice that the Crocodile shop was replaced by...surprise surprise...a jewelers.

The cinema, by the way, closed down in 2005 and was replaced by a short-lived mall called Tokyo Town. 

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Cleverly Street, Sheung Wan

Here's another one courtesy of the indefatigable Thomas. It involves the scene when there is a run on the Aberdeen branch of the Ho Pak Bank. I think we can all agree that this shots shows the typical anonymous kind of HK-scene that makes location hunting quite a challenge.

But anyway, thanks to Thomas' efforts we can now confirm that this is Cleverly Street in Sheung Wan. It's hard to believe it considering the way it looks today (a whole chunk of buildings on the left hand side have been removed to make way for a sitting out area). The bank building was located to the right of the policemen at the junction with Burd Street.

Unfortunately the current Streetview has a big truck blocking much of the scene, but I've included it anyway just to give you an idea of how much things can change.

As you can see, most of the surroundings have been redeveloped, and it may come as no surprise to find out that the Jervois Street location I posted about here is actually only about 100 yards away from this location.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Stubbs Road, Wanchai

Another part of the Dunross driving scene sees his big gold car passing in the vicinity of the famous King Yin Lei - although we don't actually see the house itself on screen, only the road just next to the driveway entrance. Shame, it's a great looking building. The building on the right hand side terrace is part of Evergreen Court.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - 22 Magazine Gap Road, Hong Kong

An early scene in the show has Dunross driving around in his big clunky Merc, passing lots of local places of interest etc. Here is one grab which features a house called "Katoomba" at #22 Magazine Gap Road. It was up in scaffolding when the filming was done but just for a renovation rather than redevelopment.

Incidentally, the road that Dunross drives down (top picture, bottom left) is actually the driveway leading to #26, and not a public road as the sequence seems to indicate.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

The Emperor sign along the lower end of Nathan Road was a landmark for quite some time and we've seen it on a few occasions on this blog elsewhere such as in Bloodsport and Roaring Fire. I honestly can't remember if the sign is still there because I haven't been down here for some time, but according to the last Streetview (okay, I know it.s a bout 5 years out of date by now) it was still there until then at least.

If you look closely on the left hand side you may be able to make out a couple of flags - including a Union Jack - that once hung outside the Hyatt Regency before it moved and the building demolished to make way for the iSquare mall. Streetview below.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Des Voeux Road Central, Sheung Wan

A brief shot from the very opening scenes of the series when we are treated to a view of the rainy (probably summertime in that case) streets of HK. One of the shots is taken looking east along Des Voeux Road in the vicinity of Western Market (almost in front of it in fact).

I have Thomas Ngan to thank for the original identification of this over on my other blog when I first did these Noble House locations.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Aberdeen Harbour, Hong Kong

I always felt the onscreen version of Four Finger Wu (played by Khigh Dheigh) was a bit of a wimp compared to the nasty conniving book version, but then again I guess massive parts of the book's various plots are left out for the sake of simplicity. Anyhoo, Aberdeen is where the smuggler/pirate/down right nasty piece of work lives in his boat and Dunross goes to meet him there.

We have a nice shot of the harbour taken from, what seems to be, the Ap Lei Chau bridge (finished circa '83) looking towards the western entrance to the harbour. You can see that, even in 1988/89, the harbour was still used as a living area for many of the boat dwellers, most of which have now been moved ashore to Govt housing.

Look carefully at the hillside in the third picture and you can see old Police Station which now serves as a youth centre. The bottom picture shows the Ap Lei Chau Govt housing estate.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - HK Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (APA for short) is a veritable HK higher education institute dealing with degrees and diplomas in performing arts: music, acting, opera, dance, film production etc. In Noble House the main campus building along Gloucester Road doubles as the HQ for the suffering Ho Pak bank which undergoes a run thanks to some malicious rumours spread by a certain Quillan Gornt.

The Academy was founded in 1984 and not so long ago (2003) also managed to obtain a second - extremely attractive - campus in Pokfulam in the form of the Bethanie building.

If you have kids in HK then without doubt at some point you will come to the Academy to visit the various Childrens' shows that play at the Lyric Theatre (so far we've watched things such as Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine, Room on a Broom, The Gruffalo, Mr Ben and many more).

Anyway here it is as it appears on film as the Ho Pak Bank.

And here it is looking exactly the same (minus the fake bank emblem) courtesy of Streetview.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Dragon Garden, Tsuen Wan

A popular location for foreign film crew because of its 'Chinoise' style, most people will remember it clearly from The Man with the Golden Gun but here we also get to catch a proper close-up glimpse of the house within the extensive grounds.

The famous red front doors to the garden were put into storage when the Govt clawed back some land to widen Castle Peak Road (it went from being a nice bamboo surrounded lane into a highway. One of the doors was reinstalled a while back in its new place and you can see the Streetview below.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Okay, so in the book, the hotel in question is actually named The Victoria and Albert Hotel, but anyone who has been to HK will know that it is the grand old lady of TST that our American protagonists settle down in. In the TV show, I think perhaps the name was a bit too prominent for our film makers to cover up, so they just left it as is.

Back in 1989 we can still see the place before it was given its additional office tower (added in 1994) and the basement carpark that is now accessed from the main driveway seen above. Actually, I'm not sure when the carpark was added, but perhaps at the same time as the 30-floor office block? As a result of the carpark the front driveway was raised a couple of feet and the main entrance lost its steps as a result.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Shun Tak Centre, Sheung Wan

The Shun Tak Centre - the locations of the HK/Macau Ferry Terminal for those who are not familiar with HK - is used on a couple of occasions as a stand in for Kai Tak Airport Terminal. First there is this shot of Gordon Jackson walking past the ground floor escalators.

When I was first writing about Noble House locations on my other blog, I had initially mistaken this for the real Kai Tak terminal because there was a similar escalator system that led up to the terminal viewing gallery and cafe. Anyway, following a quick trip to Macau on Saturday I managed to get a reasonably similar angle with my phone. See below. 

As you can see it hasn't really changed at all in nearly 25 years.

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Worldwide House, Central

Worldwide House is well-known for its lower floors' dedication to the local Filipino community. It has a whole load of shops on the 1st floor that cater specifically for Filipino tastes and needs. Just head down there any Sunday and you'll see what I mean. In Noble House the building is the HQ for Gornt's empire, Rothwell-Gornt, and we get to see the ground floor entrance as well as the odd scene shot inside Gornt's office which does appear to be inside the building itself.

Not many people realise that the building itself is built on the former site of the rather elegant General Post Office that sadly, along with many other very grand and unique colonial-era buildings, disappeared throughout the 70's and 80's. On an aside, the sole remaining pieces of the old GPO building are several columns that were donated and moved to Kadoorie Farm in Lam Tsuen where they still stand today. Anywhere, here is the current building we are talking about.

The ground floor is also Exit A of the Central MTR station, hence the MTR sign on the wall.

The views from Gornt's office show not only Exchange Square on the left but also Jardine House. The lower picture seems to be showing the previous building to the current Chater House. It was in fact the old Swire House (demolished in 1998) with its rather more stylish rooftop - the current building is, unsurprisingly for modern HK, just a boring generic glass box.

Noble House (Mini Series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Jardine House, Central

Time for a revamp of my Noble House posts, one of the more substantial contributions to the burgeoning locations this blog has covered over the years. I've also decided this time round to do the locations on and episode by episode basis rather than just one big mass of stuff from random parts of the 4 part series. As such I've added "Noble House Episode 1" etc to the labels allowing better filtering.

Jardine House features extensively throughout the series because it it the HQ of the Noble House, Struan's. Formerly the Connaught Centre - HK's very first so-called skyscraper - it was built in the early 70's and later covered in aluminium when bits of concrete started to fall off.