"Tinseltown" refers to Hollywood

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

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Tinsel Town is a television drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 co-produced by BBC Scotland

BBC Scotland

BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...

 and Raindog/Deep Indigo Productions. It ran for two series, the first debuting on BBC2 in 2000 and the second airing on BBC Choice

BBC Choice

BBC Choice was a BBC TV station which launched on 23 September 1998 and closed on 9 February 2003. It was the first British TV channel to broadcast exclusively in digital format, and was the first new channel from the BBC since BBC Two launched in 1964...

 the following year. Set throughout the city of Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, it deals with the lifestyles of eight main characters who each have the titular Tinsel Town nightclub in common. In the second series, the Tinsel Town name has extended to feature a clothing retail store in addition to the nightclub.

Produced and broadcast in the wake of 1999's controversial TV drama Queer as Folk

Queer as Folk (UK TV series)

Queer as Folk is a 1999 British television series that chronicles the lives of three gay men living in Manchester's gay village around Canal Street. Both Queer as Folk and Queer as Folk 2 were written by Russell T Davies...

, and promoted as a "Scottish version" of that series, Tinsel Town was defined by its broadcaster as "a cutting-edge saga of life and love in Glasgow club land". In its debut year the series was nominated for four BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards

BAFTA Scotland

BAFTA in Scotland is the Scottish branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Formed in 1997, the branch holds an annual awards ceremony, the British Academy Scotland Awards , to recognise achievement by performers and production staff in Scottish film, television and video games...

: Best Television Performance nominations for Dawn Steele

Dawn Steele

Dawn Anne Steele is a Scottish actress best known for her roles in the TV series Monarch of the Glen, Sea of Souls & Wild at Heart.-Career:...

 and Kate Dickie

Kate Dickie

Kate Dickie is a Scottish actress who has appeared in television series, stage plays and films. She is best-known for her portrayal as the security camera operative Jackie in her starring debut Red Road, directed by Andrea Arnold, and for which she was given several awards as best actress, among...

, a Best Producer nomination for Robbie Allen and a Best Television Director nomination for actress turned director Caroline Paterson

Caroline Paterson

Caroline Paterson is a Scottish actress who has appeared in many Scottish television shows such as one-off STV drama, The Steamie and the BBC's Rab C. Nesbitt. However, she is most recognized for her role in EastEnders as Mark Fowler's wife, Ruth...

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These characters include Stevie Allen as 37-year old policeman Lewis Reid, and David Paisley

David Paisley

David Paisley is a Scottish actor, especially well known for roles as midwife Ben Saunders in Holby City, Ryan Taylor in Tinsel Town and most recently Rory Murdoch in River City.-Career:...

 as his 17-year old boyfriend Ryan Taylor. Ryan's sister Sandra (Mandy Mathews) is also a central character with her friendship with Jack Donnelly (Thomas Hicky) providing humour and balance to the cast.

The first series also centred on two highly charged and competitive drug dealers, Brady (Mathew Duffy) and Coutts (Stuart Sinclar-Blyth). Throughout Series 1, Brady embarks on a sordid affair with Coutts girlfriend Teresa (Steele) resulting in the end of series cliffhanger. New club DJ Lex (Dickie) is introduced at the start of the series and we see her battling to escape her sadistic ex-husband with the help of the club owner, transvestite Stella (Jim Twaddle).

Series two saw the transmission times reduced to 30 minutes and the loss of Brady and Coutts who were central to the plot and cliffhanger of series 1. It aired again on BBC Choice in 2001 and then BBC2 in 2002. The first series was released on VHS, and neither has been repeated by the BBC since. Rights to both series were acquired by Rapture TV

Rapture TV

Rapture TV was a previously free-to-air satellite television station operated from the United Kingdom, founded in 1997...

, who are at least theoretically Scottish-owned, and began airing in May 2006. This is one of the first times that a BBC series has been sold to a free-to-air

Free-to-air

Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...

 broadcaster, or been shown FTA other than on the BBC itself.

The shows effective "theme song" is "Out of Control" by the Chemical Brothers and Bernard Sumner

Bernard Sumner

Bernard Sumner , also known as Bernard Dickin, Bernard Dicken and Bernard Albrecht is an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, keyboard player and producer....

, which plays through the majority of in-club sequences as well as other times in the show. However, the actual opening and closing theme is a remix of "Tinseltown in the Rain" by Scottish band The Blue Nile

The Blue Nile

The Blue Nile is an adult alternative/pop band from Glasgow. The music of The Blue Nile is built heavily on synthesizers and electronic instrumentation and percussion, although later works featured acoustic guitar more prominently.-Early years:...

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