Edinburgh heritage campaigners rail against Netflix One Day plaque plan

Heritage campaigners have protested about a proposal from Netflix to erect a plaque commemorating its hit show One Day on a historic tenement in Edinburgh.

Netflix has applied to Edinburgh city council for permission to fit the red plaque at the foot of steps on Vennel, a path beside the city’s medieval wall which offers an Instagrammable view of the Grassmarket and the castle.

The steps, inside Edinburgh’s Unesco world heritage site, featured briefly in One Day as the site of a kiss between its characters Emma and Dexter, played by Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall.

Terry Levinthal, the director of the Cockburn Association, a built heritage charity, said the application was simply product-placement about a show which was irrelevant to the city’s history or cultural life.

He said Edinburgh features twice and very briefly in One Day , which is based on a book by David Nicholls about a couple who met at their graduation ball at Edinburgh university and then follows their lives.

Levinthal said the application highlighted concerns about the increase in selfie-tourism raised in August by Unesco, where tourists overwhelm locations and local communities simply to photograph themselves there.

Edinburgh has numerous sites made famous simply as places to post on Instagram, including the steps on Vennel. Unesco fears that trend degrades the tourism experience and can also lead to disrespectful or dangerous behaviour.

“It has nothing to do with the place or the city; it commemorates no historic or special person or event,” he said in a blog posted on Thursday.

“It could result in increased public safety issues, due to increased pressure from film or selfie tourists; and finally, the precedent it would set for a much wider proliferation of promotional material is considerable.”

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He said the Cockburn Association would object to the planning application on the grounds this was simply about marketing and should be treated by the council as an advertisement; the fact the building being used is listed was not the main issue.

Policy on historic plaques in Scotland is overseen by the government agency Historic Environment Scotland. It said they were limited to people who have made a “significant difference to Scotland” through their “impact and accomplishments”. They also need to be dead.

Netflix fixed the plaque, carrying a quote from the show, on the wall for a short time in July to mark St Swithin’s day – the day when Nicholls’ book updates readers on Emma and Dexter’s lives.

Netflix and the architects who have submitted the application, Capital A Architecture, did not respond to requests for comment.