BOLTON celebrity spotters are in luck today as filming begins in the town for a major new Netflix series.

Downton Abbey's Siobhan Finneran, The Hobbit's Richard Armitage, Jennifer Saunders and Oscar-nominated Stephen Rea may all be seen in Le Mans Crescent, which is being used for scenes in the Harlan Coben thriller series, The Stranger.

Yesterday the film crew was setting things up in preparation for filming, which begins today and will continue into next week.

A technician told the Bolton News: "We've installed black-out blinds in the building because it's going to be a police station and some of the scenes need to look like it's night time."

Along with equipment vans, platform film cranes were parked-up, suggesting there could be some exterior shots of the council officers and former magistrate's court.

The eight-part series is being made by the award-winning Red production company, owned by former Bury Grammar School pupil Nicola Shindler. She is also the series' executive producer.

Danny Brocklehurst, who has written the adaptation of Coben’s novel, told the Radio Times: "It’s fantastic to reunite with Netflix, Harlan and RED for another complex, emotional thriller. Richard Armitage is perfect for the role of Adam, and I can’t wait to bring our binge-able new drama to life.”

The Red website says of the series: " A secret destroys a man’s perfect life and sends him on a collision course with a deadly conspiracy in this shocking thriller.

"Adam Price [Arimtage] has a good life, two wonderful sons, and a watertight marriage — until one night a stranger sits next to him in a bar and tells him a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne [Dervla Kirwan].

"Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne’s deception, and realises that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them."

Bolton is fast becoming a "Hollywood of the North" as the first-choice location for film-makers. So far this year the BBC has filmed scenes for its new series Years and Years and Sky TV were here to film its new political thriller, Cobra.

Parking spaces in Le Mans Crescent between Howell Croft North to University House will be suspended from 7.30am to 7pm today.