Missed Call is immediately earning a spot in our busy TV schedule.
There’s nothing we love more than settling down with a gripping thriller to get stuck into. From The Teacher to The Capture, the right series can keep us hooked from start to finish. We’re still waiting to hear about a potential season 4 of The Capture, and deciding whether to dive into new episodes of Beef on Netflix.
But in the meantime, we’ll happily make do with Channel 5’s Missed Call, which follows every parent’s worst nightmare: a young girl who goes missing while on a school exchange trip abroad.
Single mother Sarah Gleason (Joanna Scanlan) is devastated to learn that her teenage daughter Katie (Emily Coates) has disappeared during a trip to France. She immediately travels to a small French village to search for her, and while we fully sympathise with the emotional turmoil and are invested in the twists and turns, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t also getting distracted by the stunning French countryside.
We need to know all the filming locations for Missed Call, and whether we can basically plan our next holiday around them.
Is Saint-Michel a real town?
The village of Saint-Michel, where Katie is staying with a host family before she goes missing, and where most of the drama unfolds, isn’t actually a real place. Yes, it’s completely fictional.
But while Saint-Michel itself may not exist, Missed Call was genuinely filmed in the South of France, giving the series its sun-drenched, slightly unsettling sense of beauty. So at least the postcard-perfect backdrop is real, even if the village is not.
It's not as shocking as The Teacher's surprising filming location, which was set entirely in a different country.
Where was Missed Call filmed?
The production stayed based in Montpellier and filmed extensively at the nearby historic Manufacture Royale de Villeneuvette in Hérault, a former royal manufacturing village that’s now a popular tourist destination. This striking location served as the primary backdrop for the fictional town of Saint-Michel.
All those scenes of Sarah wandering through cobbled streets were shot at Manufacture Royale de Villeneuvette. The site was once a royal woollen cloth factory dating back to the 17th century, and remained in operation until its closure in the 1970s.
The series also filmed in the nearby village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.
And here’s the big reveal: the entire series was filmed in France, including scenes that are meant to be set in the UK. That means Sarah’s home, and even the school drop-off scenes at the start of Katie’s trip, were all shot on location in France. With so little of the story actually set in Britain, it simply made more sense to keep production in one place… and you genuinely wouldn’t know it while watching.
Given the predominantly French cast and production, Missed Call will also air in France, with Joanna Scanlan’s performance dubbed for local audiences.
Where is the house Katie stays at in Missed Call?
Right at the start of episode one, we see the stunning house where Katie is staying during her exchange programme. Honestly, school exchanges did not look like this for us.
The property is a real place in the south of France, and you can actually stay there yourself. It’s called Château Saint Martin de la Garrigue, located in the town of Montagnac, around a 50-minute drive from Montpellier.
Dating back to the 16th century, the estate sits on 420 acres of land, including extensive vineyards. It can accommodate up to 16 guests and is also available as a wedding venue, which feels slightly unfair given most of our school trips involved a fairly basic hostel and a packed lunch.
Where is the graveyard from episode 1?
Also in the first episode, we see teacher Neil (Dean Fagan) head to a rather scenic graveyard while making a phone call. It’s a tense scene, but once again, we’re a little distracted by just how beautiful the Missed Call filming location is.
And yes, this is a real graveyard. The scene was filmed at Cimetière Marin Paul Valéry de Sète, located in the French seaside town of Sète.
Watch Missed Call on Channel 5.
