Where ITV After The Flood was filmed – including locations across Greater Manchester

The first series proved a hit with viewers, now After the Flood returns for series two, with a host of familiar Greater Manchester and Lancashire locations used for the thriller

16:09, 18 Jan 2026Updated 21:24, 18 Jan 2026

After the Flood Series 2 returns to ITV on January 18, with Sophie Rundle as police officer Joanna Marshall(Image: ITV)

Thriller After the Flood returns for a second series on ITV this month, with a new mystery for newly-promoted detective Jo Marshall, played by Sophie Rundle, to crack. The first series was a big hit with viewers, set in the moorland town of Waterside where police officer Jo was tasked with untangling an earlier mystery after a devastating flood swept through the community.

The new series sees Jo on the trail of a baffling new murder investigation. As tensions simmer in Waterside amid the rising threat of moorland fires and the subsequent risk of further flooding, a body is discovered in bizarre circumstances.

Jo’s race to stop the killer brings her into direct conflict with powerful and influential forces within the town, ultimately drawing her into an investigation that becomes deeply personal. One that will require her to operate in secret if she is to have any hope of rooting out the corruption that has blighted the town’s police force – and her own family – for decades.

Series 1 aired in 2024, and as we rejoin the characters in 2026 we can expect the drama to be a year on from the end of the last series. Jo and her former partner Pat are now separated, and they are looking at investigating Mackie – the officer last seen threatening them if they said anything about what he’d done.

Jill Halfpenny joins the cast for Series 2 of After the Flood, alongside Sophie Rundle as detective Jo Marshall(Image: ITV)

There’s another big mystery to solve too when they find a body on the Moors, after a big moorland fire, but that the body has been killed in a mysterious way.

The drama, created by Manchester’s Quay Street Productions, once again used locations across the north west to bring to life the storylines. Execuitve Producer Nicola Shindler says about the setting: “The location is a beautiful character to the story because it looks so good, it’s pretty, but at the same time, this is a place where a lot of flooding is happening and where other communities are suffering.

“Locating it in places where real-life events are happening makes it feel more authentic. I always like filming in the North West, and we’ve got a brilliant cast and crew. That’s what After the Flood is taking advantage of – that we have people who work really hard, understand the local problems and how we work together to make a really good team.”

We chatted to locations manager Jamie Muirhead about the different locations used for some of the series’ most dramatic moments, including in Wythenshawe, Royton, Saddleworth, Rochdale and Heywood in Greater Manchester, and in Glossop and Old Glossop in Derbyshire.

Where is Waterside?

After the Flood Series 2 sees the return of Philip Glenister, as well as former Corrie star Ian Puleston-Davies (pictured)(Image: ITV)

The village of Waterside is once again at the heart of the action, although this is a fictional town created the purposes of the drama. But the real-life setting for the moorland town was the picturesque town of Glossop in Derbyshire.

Jamie explains: “We are supposed to be in Yorkshire with Waterside, but we used Old Glossop and New Glossop, and then areas around Rochdale and Chadderton for houses, because they have similar stone. We used Chadderton Town Hall for one scene.

“The reason we went to Glossop is because it’s an area that’s not really been touched for filming since League of Gentleman years and years ago.”

How did they film the wild fires?

Fires on the moors as part of the drama in After The Flood series 2(Image: ITV)

The big storyline at the start of the drama is the wild fires on the moors. Naturally, to film those kinds of scenes, the production team had to be extra careful.

They headed to moors around Watergrove Reservoir and Piethorn Reservoir in Rochdale to shoot the scenes.

Jamie says: “The brief is that there are wildfires up on the moors, the moors we looked at involved a lot of dynamic scenes with lots of jeopardy. Fortuitously United Utlities were very helpful and allowed us to seek areas for what we wanted to do.

“We didn’t actually set anything on fire, but the whole logistics of putting smoke in the air, it’s bird nesting time so you have to make sure you tick boxes with that, we had ornithologists, flags everywhere that we did the building so that birds don’t nest.

“We did the fire scenes at multiple places, at Piethorne Reservoir and Watergrove Reservoir, they had fairly good tracks going to them, and we had marshals on hand. We had signs at every entry point to alert local residents that this is a film set, it’s not real.”

The scenes of wild fires raging was actually a stroke of luck. Jamie explained: “I did as a matter of luck get some drone footage of a real fire. I was driving down the M62 around junction 19 and 20 on the north side and the whole of the north side was on fire. So I stopped, flew the drone over the top of it and, got some great shots and advice from the fire guys there.”

They also shot some of the smoke scenes at Tata Chemicals in Northwich.

The police station

The police station in the drama was set in an old office building in Wythenshawe(Image: ITV)

We’ll see lots of scenes inside the police station this series, and while the exterior is the old Natwest bank in Glossop, the interior of the police station was all shot inside an old office in Wythenshawe. They took over Brotherton House, formerly a Barclays Bank data centre, that has been empty for the past few years.

Viewers familiar with the building off Cornfield Drive may recognise its large windows from the action, where we will see newly-promoted detective Jo Rundle hard at work, alongside her new boss, played by Jill Halfpenny.

The building is destined to make way for a new housing development in Wythenshawe in future, so the whole place was empty. It meant the film crew were able to use it for interior sets for a lot of the drama on After the Flood, like for hospital scenes and inside Molly’s house too.

Indeed the hospital set that has been created inside the office has been kept to be used for future film productions.

Benson’s House

Benson (played by Alun Armstrong) features in series 2 of After the Flood(Image: ITV)

Part of the drama will see the character of Alan Benson (played by Alun Armstrong) introduced to the action as a hugely successful businessman and the town’s most generous benefactor.

He lives in a sprawling estate surrounded by his privately-owned moorland, which he uses for high-end grouse shoots for the rich and connected.

The film crew found a real house in Clitheroe to set those scenes – it’s set in its own huge gardens that require three full time gardeners.

Jamie said: “It is the perfect house for this character of Benson, he’s a little bit older than his wife, we wanted that to be reflected in the property so we had the old cigar wood pannelled shotgun, old sunken sofa type rooms, and also the bouji grey modern side, it all comes together.

“It became a really great location Middlewood, we had the best time there. The couple who owned it Paul and Brian were really welcoming, they were probably the nicest people we’ve ever had to work with on a set like this.”

All the pubs

There’s no regular pub in this series, but a number of pubs will be seen in the action.

Indeed four pubs will be seen in the action across the series. They include two pubs in Old Glossop – The Black Bull and The Queens.

You’ll also see The Summit pub in Newhey used for its interior, and The Cedar Tree in Milnrow used for an exterior scene.

Also featured during the action is Glossop bistro Tallow. It had just opened when the film crew arrived.