Little Big Italy

Location, Location, Location and then …Pizza

Hong Kong doesn’t wait for TV productions to catch up. It moves, crowds up, breathes — and dares you to keep pace.

For Episode 4 of the seventh season of iconic long running Little Big Italy, produced by Banijay and broadcast on Nove and Amazon Prime, that energy became part of the story. As the local production partner and location manager, The Hong Kong Fixer supported the series’ Hong Kong chapter on the ground, navigating the city’s scale, speed, and unpredictability to bring a prime-time television format to life.

What followed was less a traditional shoot than a choreography — of people, places, and moments that only exist once, It also was….a delightful culinary experience.

Pre-production & recce

Finding the right opening in a city that never pauses

Every episode of Little Big Italy begins with a sense of arrival. In Hong Kong, that meant finding a location that could speak instantly — visually, emotionally — without slowing the production down.

During pre-production, our team accompanied the director and key creatives on a recce across the city, weighing cinematic impact against logistics. Rooftops, promenades, hidden corners were considered. In the end, one key scene choice landed on The Tsim Tsui Promenade. Hong Kong’s world famous skyline is a hard to beat backdrop.

Looking directly over the harbour, exposed to sun, wind, ferries, and foot traffic, the promenade offered exactly what the format needed: scale without spectacle, identity without explanation. The kind of location that works because it’s real — and because it can still be controlled, just enough.

That balance is where effective location management, and permitting, in Hong Kong quietly lives.

TV Production as an urban ballet

With a 16-person international crew, equipment moving between districts, and scenes unfolding in live environments, the shoot demanded constant adjustment around a pretty well organized production schedule that highlighted three awesome restaurants: Little Napoli, Giando and Ama. Italy is so well presented in Hong Kong!

Vans were rerouted, Schedules compressed. A Chinese market turned into a street-side osteria, checkered tablecloth included, without warning.

The director wanted a busy city. In Causeway Bay, the team waited for the crossing to fill — not to clear. The shot only worked once the city asserted itself and The HK Fixer helped choreograph the flow of pedestrians.

This is where Fixer work stops being a service and becomes a rhythm, an art: knowing when to push, when to pause, and when to let Hong Kong do what it does best.

For us, what could be tastier? A TV shoot where you get to sample the best Italian food there is. Heaven.

Projects like Little Big Italy don’t succeed because everything goes to plan. They succeed because someone on the ground knows how to move when it doesn’t.

So for your next TV show production where Hong Kong is the backdrop, do not hesitate to get in touch with us.