TV programmes are usually made in dull, sterile places: studios in dodgy parts of town, or a parking lot in Brent. But 1066: The Battle for Middle Earth was filmed on the same stretch of Yorkshire coast where the Vikings first landed nearly 1,000 years ago.

“We thought there was a poetry to filming things where they happened,” says the producer Sue Horth of Hardy Productions. So on this shoot you won’t find Wales standing in for Sussex, or Estonia doubling as a cheap alternative to Yorkshire. Instead, they are in Danes Dyke, as the forested cleft in the coast is still called, a deep, muddy ditch that probably looked much the same 1,000 years ago and where, last summer, Danes and Anglo-Saxons once again confronted each other to re-create the crucial early part of 1066 — the battle of Fulford.

Today, the cast — led by the 20-year-old Mike Bailey of Skins fame — are preparing to shoot a scene in which they’re ambushed. After months of research, the wardrobe mistress is making final adjustments to caps and shoes, and congratulating herself on the success of the authentic denim- blue colour she achieved for Bailey’s clothes.

“This is a wicked shoot,” says Bailey, who plays Tofi, a 15-year- old sent north to fight on his wedding day. “I spent the first week running and fighting and I’ve got a sword in my hotel room that I can go back and play with.”

If you stumbled on the scene, with its tents, horses and camp fires, you could be in the 11th century, were it not for the fact that inside the tents are lemonade bottles and packets of crisps, with Apple laptops perched on top of rustic Anglo-Saxon trestles for the producers to watch what they’ve filmed so far. As the light starts to fade, one of the extras takes off his bright pink Crocs and prepares for action: a group of warriors appear on horseback, while soldiers career down a slope so steep and muddy that they have to use ropes to haul themselves back up for a retake.

1066: the Battle for Middle Earth aims to make us rethink events of that year through the eyes of not monarchs or landowners, but the helpless thousands whose villages happened to be on the path of the invaders, or the young men conscripted to fight.

“One night we were filming on the beach,” says Bailey. “The Moon was up, there were camp fires. I had to pinch myself. Every actor would love to do this.”

Down on the beach, the grey waves lap against the shore. You can almost see the longboats.

1066: The Battle for Middle Earth, Mon, Channel 4, 9pm