And while millions have watched these places on screen, few Islanders have seen the magic happen from quite so many angles as Ryde’s Andrew Browne — or, as he is known to casting directors and in credits alike, Andrew Le Brun.
Andrew’s on‑screen life began as a teenager, he was captivated by the way familiar Island streets could be turned into somewhere entirely different with a few props, a fresh sign and a camera lens pointed at the right angle.
Newport, he recalls, once became the town of Heatherdown for the BBC drama The Doll — St Thomas’s Square was suddenly transported into a fictional world.
The ‘auction’ scene being set up at the fictional Priestal Institute,in Yarmouth, in July 1999 (Image: Andrew Browne)
Andrew Le Brun and his sister, Angela, on the set of the BBC’s Doctors and Nurses, which filmed an episode on the Isle of Wight. (Image: Andrew Le Brun)
Shanklin Pier too enjoyed its brush with reinvention, playing Smallhaven Pier in 1980’s The End of the End of the Pier Show, before starring again in 1986’s Walking the Planks as Midbourne Pier, which starred Michael Elphick as a businessman who buys the pier.
In 1999, the cameras returned again, this time with London Weekend Television’s Reach for the Moon, which transformed Yarmouth into Priestal.
Andrew was cast as a buyer at a lively auction inside the Priestal Institute, filmed in the real-life Yarmouth Institute, alongside the late Lynda Bellingham.
The experience gave him his first substantial taste of life on a set, complete with bright lights, bustling crews and the gentle chaos of shooting in the height of summer.
More roles and more renamed Island towns followed.
In 2003, the BBC sitcom Doctors and Nurses relocated St Mary’s Hospital to the fictional St Anne’s Hospital, East Cowes.
Adrian Edmondson and David Mitchell led the cast, and both Andrew and his sister Angela appeared in the production.
He played a doctor, while she filmed scenes for a staff party aboard a boat at Yarmouth Harbour.
Ryde Town Hall became the hospital roof for a night shoot, while Southern Vectis buses rolled into exterior scenes.
The interiors, however, were shot far from the Island, at Central Television in Nottingham.
One of the most elaborate productions to use Island scenery was Fragile, starring Calista Flockhart, in 2004.
East Cowes, the Crown Hotel in Ryde and streets in Binstead and Wootton all doubled for locations that, in the film, were supposed to be in or around the haunted Mercy Falls Children’s Hospital.
On screen, Flockhart’s nurse disembarks at East Cowes, drives onto Ryde Pier, then somehow arrives on the Military Road at Freshwater, before the road abruptly becomes one near Reading.
Andrew appeared as a commuter stepping off the Red Funnel car ferry in East Cowes — one small role in a Spanish film built almost entirely from sleight‑of‑hand geography.
The Island even stood in for Scandinavia in 2001, when French television filmed Honour Thy Father, using Ryde Pier, the Esplanade and a Wightlink ferry, temporarily transformed into the Nordic Line.
Five years later, a German production, Abschied der Morgen (Farewell to Tomorrow), used Yarmouth and the famous boatyard of Clare Lallow in Cowes.
Andrew featured again, this time as a boatbuilder.
By the mid‑2000s, he had earned his Equity card and formally adopted the screen name Andrew Le Brun.
With it came opportunities beyond the water’s edge.
He played Mrs Coulter’s butler in The Golden Compass, sharing sets with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
Andrew also appeared as a refugee in Children of Men, filmed at Pinewood Studios, and he reunited with Clive Owen on Universal Pictures’ Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which also placed him in scenes alongside Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush.
He took a role as a 16th century magistrate in the same film, at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and, later, appeared as a lawyer in Judge John Deed, starring Martin Shaw.
He spent a day at Shepperton with Tony Robinson, filming a promotional piece for Ancestry.
As Andrew jokes, he has been fortunate enough to have had four screen wives.
When Andrew was 18, he was on the set of ATV historical drama Edward VII at Island Harbour (then known as Binfield Marina), which starred Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria and Timothy West as her son, Prince ‘Bertie’, who succeeded her in 1901, as King Edward.
Robert Hardy, Charles Dance and Felicity Kendal were also in the cast.
Yet for all his time in front of the camera, it is what happens behind it that fascinates him most.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates this better than his decision to acquire and preserve the Meridian TV Isle of Wight studio equipment when the Newport site closed.
“When I heard that it was to close in 2018, I felt I couldn’t let such a unique piece of Island history be lost forever,” he said.
Behind the scenes at Island Harbour, for ATV’s Edward VII (Image: Andrew Le Brun)
Andrew Browne with an old TVS broadcast camera he acquired in circa 2020. (Image: Andrew Browne)
So he acquired the two large television cameras, equipment and scenery, recreating the studio at home.
The cameras themselves have remarkable histories.
One was used for the very last TVS outside broadcast in January 1992, recorded at Whippingham Church.
The second, used by Southern Television, TVS and Meridian, was used to cover the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, on their departure from Waterloo Station in 1981.
It also covered the capsizing of the M.V. Tarpenbeck in Sandown Bay in 1979.
In 1994, Andrew was made an honorary member of the Guild of Television Cameramen.