Television crews descended on Rochester to film a new drama series of Jekyll and Hyde.

ITV has commandeered several shops in the historic High Street to transform it into an authentic 1930s London street scene.

A sharp-eyed stage crew member spotted a modern day burglar alarm on the side of a building and promptly removed it.

Tom Bateman, who has just played the lead role in Shakespeare in Love in London’s West End, takes on the lead role as Robert Jekyll.

Richard E. Grant, of Withnail and I, Downton Abbey and Dr Who fame, plays the boss of a secret government department. Former Coronation Street actress Natalie Gumede, who took part in the 2013 series of Strictly Come Dancing, is Bella, Jekyll’s love interest.

The adaptation of the original story by Robert Louis Stevenson is by Fast Show comic and novelist Charlie Higson.

This production is set in the 1930s in an era of Hollywood glamour and monster movies and focuses on a young troubled hero, Robert Jekyll, the grandson of the original doctor featured in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The crews arrived to set up last Wednesday and it is believed some of the filming has been done at night. They are due to film at other locations in Kent and the programme is to be screened later in the year.

It’s not the first time Rochester has been used as a filming location. The 2012 adaptation of Dickens’ last work The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring Matthew Rhys and Freddie Fox, was filmed in and around the High Street.

In 2010, Gary Lineker filmed a Walkers crisps commercial, choreographed by Strictly’s Bruno Tonioli.

But it has a long way to go to match Chatham’s Historic Dockyard which has been used for a plethora of films and TV shows.

These include Call the Midwife and Mr Selfridge, which can be seen on our screens on Sunday nights.

For more about dramas filmed in Kent, see your What’s On supplement