Metro-Land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the then Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Sir John Betjeman. It was directed by Edward Mirzoeff, and first broadcast on 26 February 1973. The film celebrates suburban life in the area to the northwest of London that grew up in the early 20th century around the Metropolitan Railway (MR)—later the Metropolitan line of the London Underground. "Metro-land" was a slogan coined by the MR for promotional purposes in about 1915, and used for about twenty years until shortly after the incorporation of the MR into the railways division of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. As Betjeman himself puts it at the beginning of Metro-Land, it was a "Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second". Betjeman carries with him, as he travels, the pamphlet guide to Metro-land from the 1920s. The film was critically acclaimed and is fondly remembered today. A DVD was released in 2006 to coincide with the centenary of Betjeman's birth. The concept According to its director Edward Mirzoeff, the programme was conceived in 1971 over a lunch with John Betjeman at Wheeler's Restaurant in Soho. The two had recently collaborated on a BBC series called Bird's-Eye View, which offered an aerial vision of Britain. Metro-Land was commissioned by Robin Scott, Controller of BBC2, with the initial working title of "The Joys of Urban Living". As completed, it is a series of vignettes of life in the suburbs of Metro-land, drawn together by Betjeman's commentary—partly in verse—whose text was published in 1978, and interwoven with black-and-white film shot from a Metropolitan Railway (MR) train in 1910. It is 49 minutes in length. Locations in Metro-Land Betjeman's first appearance in Metro-Land is over a pint of beer in a station buffet, reminiscent of a scene in the film Brief Encounter (1945). This sequence was filmed at Horsted Keynes, on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. Other locations include: Chiltern Court, an apartment block constructed over Baker Street station, the MR's London terminus; in 1972 (the year of filming) the block still contained a restaurant. The restaurant is now The Metropolitan Bar, part of the Wetherspoons chain; Marlborough Road, a station closed in 1939, whose booking hall had by the time of filming become an Angus Steak House. (This subsequently became a Chinese restaurant and then returned to railway use in 2012, supporting the new S