Before Villanelle, there was Carolyn. Before she ran the Russia Desk at MI6, before she became the woman Fiona Shaw made unforgettable across four seasons of Killing Eve, she was a young agent named Martha Schmitt, deep undercover in 1982 East Berlin. The BBC never went to Berlin to film it. They went to Lithuania – three cities, five months, and the coldest winter in fifteen years.
Honey is a six-part espionage thriller created by Emma Moran, directed by Toby MacDonald and Michelle Savill, produced by Sid Gentle Films – the company behind Killing Eve – in collaboration with Baltic Film Services.
Ann Skelly plays Martha Schmitt, the young Carolyn Martens. Nate Mann plays Kurt Fischer. Jannis Niewöhner plays Friedrich Bauman. Rory Kinnear plays Graham Anderson. Sofia Oxenham, Sonita Henry and July Namir round out the cast. Fiona Shaw has given the project her blessing.
“We realised East Berlin is far more interesting than Moscow, because it’s the fulcrum of the spy world,” said producer Sally Woodward Gentle.
Location scouting began at the beginning of summer 2025. The thriller is being filmed in three Lithuanian cities – Kaunas, Vilnius and Klaipėda. According to producer Christopher Hall, all of them share many similarities with Berlin.
Vilnius served as the primary filming base, with 57 days of shooting scheduled in the city. The production filmed in the districts of Naujamiestis – the New Town, with its mix of 19th-century and Soviet-era architecture – and Lazdynai, the planned residential district built in the late 1960s, whose uniform apartment blocks and wide concrete spaces provided the look of an East German housing estate.
“Vilnius is a very modern city, and sometimes it can be challenging to hide contemporary details,” Hall explained on the Vilnius Film Office site. “However, we found some remarkable locations here.”
“I think it was one of the coldest winters in fifteen years or something,” said Ann Skelly. “So it was just like thick, thick snow.” For a series set behind the Iron Curtain in midwinter, the weather did the production’s work for free.
The standout Vilnius location was the Palace of Culture, Entertainment and Sports – a former cultural building associated with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Its imposing interiors were transformed into several different on-screen environments: a bridal salon, secret police offices, interrogation rooms and corridors.
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In November 2025, Kaunas turned into a film set. The city’s streets and facades were captured by British and Norwegian crews as Laisvės Avenue – the main pedestrian boulevard – was transformed into an 1980s East Berlin streetscape, with vintage vehicles establishing the atmosphere. A local pharmacy was converted into a wedding dress shop.
Hall did not hide his admiration. “Kaunas flourished in the interwar years. Its architecture is truly unique. The streets and façades here are wonderful. It is a remarkable city. I love interwar architecture. We have the old cars, and the setting is perfect. I doubt we could achieve this anywhere else in the world,” he told Kaunas In.
Kaunas has already proved its versatility on international productions – HBO’s Chernobyl used locations in the city for several of its Moscow sequences. The Bank of Lithuania in Kaunas is one of the city’s notable interwar buildings, while its collection of preserved apartments and museums offers further opportunities for productions seeking authentic period interiors.
The production also filmed in Klaipėda – the port city on the Baltic Sea known as Little Germany for its Germanic architectural heritage. Klaipėda’s Fachwerk buildings and its harbour provide a visual register completely different from the Soviet concrete of Vilnius or the interwar geometry of Kaunas. Additional filming took place in Palanga, the seaside resort town on the Lithuanian coast.
Beyond the location work, filming also took place in studio facilities across Lithuania – providing the controlled environments for interiors that could not be achieved on location.
Honey premieres on BBC One in November 2026.
Lithuania.it // Vilnius Film Office // Wikipedia
© Baltic Film Services, BBC, Sid Gentle Films, ZDF Studios
© Angel, 2521 Entertainment,
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