Independent restaurants and sweet shops line the Curry Mile on Wilmslow Road, the same stretch BBC One's Hetty Wainthropp Investigates used as its main filming location in 1997.
What Rusholme looks like
forms a continuous shopping street through Rusholme, known locally as the Curry Mile. Independent restaurants, sweet shops, jewellers and grocers fill the ground floors of two and three storey Victorian terraces. Their upper brickwork is mostly original above modern illuminated fascias. A rounded corner block at Claremont Road has arched first floor windows over ground floor units for Olives, a cafe and a mini market, one of several such corner buildings along the strip.
Shopfront signs run in English alongside Arabic and Urdu script, stacked two and three to a building front. Awnings and pulled down security shutters line the pavement outside trading hours. Double decker buses run the road at close intervals. Sanam Sweet House, a long running sweet counter and restaurant, occupies one of the terraces further along Wilmslow Road.
Away from the main road, Rusholme's side streets hold a mix of older housing and a handful of larger Victorian buildings. has a red brick Gothic villa with pointed gables and stone dressings, two stone lions flanking its entrance, now a restaurant and hotel complex. runs off Wilmslow Road to a terracotta trimmed corner building with sash windows, a pub until 2020 and now converted to restaurant use. , an Art Deco block of flats in red brick with white rendered balconies, stands farther south on Wilmslow Road opposite Platt Fields Park.
's dome and minaret rise over Upper Park Road at the northern end of the strip. runs east off Wilmslow Road past an ordinary run of shopfronts, an accountant and a beauty salon among them.
Shot in Rusholme
In 1997, BBC One's Hetty Wainthropp Investigates used the Curry Mile as the main filming location for its episode Serving the Community. The shopfronts along Wilmslow Road played themselves, restaurants, sweet shops and grocers filling the same kind of Victorian terrace blocks that line the street today.
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Serving the Community, 1997
The Curry Mile
The episode filmed along the run of independent restaurants and shops that lines Wilmslow Road here, rather than at one single address. Corner blocks like this one hold several ground floor shopfronts under a shared Victorian brick front, the kind of shopfront run the production used. Street View
What Rusholme can double for
West Rogers Park in Chicago, Illinois
Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park is a South Asian restaurant strip much like the Curry Mile, independently owned restaurants, sweet shops and grocers filling two and three storey brick buildings. Backlit signs in English and Urdu run along its storefronts in the same stacked way as Rusholme's own. Devon Avenue's roadway is wider with angled parking on both sides, so tighter frames without the full street width hold the comparison best. Try searching South Asian restaurant strip now.
Wembley in London, England
Ealing Road in Wembley has a similar run of independent South Asian shops, jewellers and sweet shops under bright fascia signs above Victorian terrace buildings. The scale and the two storey shopfronts read close to Rusholme's own stretch of Wilmslow Road. Ealing Road's buildings sit lower overall and its junctions are wider, so a scout should favour tighter frames to match the Curry Mile's taller run. Try searching South Asian jewellers and sweets now.
74th Street in Jackson Heights has sari shops, jewellers and South Asian restaurants along a dense commercial strip, with backlit signage stacked the same way as the Curry Mile. The elevated 7 train crosses overhead at the Roosevelt Avenue station a block north, which Wilmslow Road has nothing to match. Shoot further down 74th Street away from the Roosevelt Avenue station, since Wilmslow Road has nothing overhead to match the elevated tracks; tighter shopfront level frames keep the station out entirely. Try searching sari shops and jewellers now.
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