Leslie Grantham's English Neighbour airs on September 9 on BNT
Tue, Aug 16 2011 11:45 CET
by Gabriel Hershman

Viewers will have noticed that BNT has started to plug its new series The English Neighbour, due to be screened on September 9 and then continuing every Friday night.

The series, based on a popular novel by Bulgarian writer Mikhail Veshim, is about a British retiree who moves to a fictional Bulgarian village. Although most of the dialogue will be in Bulgarian, Grantham will be speaking English during the early episodes, presumably with subtitles for Bulgarian viewers.

In the series Leslie Grantham, best known as Den Watts in TV soap Eastenders, plays a retired chemist, married to a Bulgarian, who comes to live in the remote fictional village of Plodorodno.

Grantham described The English Neighbour as "
a lighthearted look at foreigners buying property"
. Naturally, there's room for all kinds of wry observations on an outsider in a Bulgarian village, including suspicions by an ex-communist that he is a member of MI6.

"
My character is totally fixated with Bulgaria. He comes out early on his own to do all the paperwork. The village is a strange place;
it thinks it's English. There's even one chap, named Noki, who wants to change his name to Nottingham Forest, so when an Englishman turns up, they think it's great. My character wants to go back to traditional Bulgarian ways, planting my own vegetables and doing everything myself. The other villagers think I'm a bit mad,"
said Grantham when he was interviewed by The Sofia Echo a year ago.

Filming on The English Neighbour took place in the countryside around Ellin Pellin. The series seems to have spent some time "
in the can"
, presumably awaiting a suitable transmission date.

Grantham very much enjoyed his time in Bulgaria. You can read the full interview he gave to The Sofia Echo

Sounds interesting, although given some of the experiences I've read on this forum, they should have contacted us for advice, I'm sure we could have added some interesting plotlines! [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Chris wrote:

Sounds interesting, although given some of the experiences I've read on this forum, they should have contacted us for advice, I'm sure we could have added some interesting plotlines! [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I certainly could, but mine would have been true facts not fictitious, :Great:so I don't suppose they would have been of any use