AFTER HE WAS laid off from a publishing job, in 2009, Lewis Swan, a passionate James Bond fan based in London, thought he could build a business around touring film locations seen in blockbuster British franchises like Bond and Harry Potter. Brit Movie Tours took off, but it wasn’t long before requests took an unexpected turn for the homicidal. “There was a huge appetite for murder crime shows,” Mr. Swan recalled.
Over the years, he added several crime-focused offerings to his roster, including a Belfast walking tour of locations seen in “Line of Duty,” a series centered on police corruption in an unspecified British city; half- and full-day options based on “Vera,” wherein a septuagenarian detective solves gruesome killings in northeast of England; and a bus tour through the counties northwest of London, which in the fictive world of “Midsomer Murders” have seen more than 250 suspicious deaths. “We’ll show people a clip or stills of the scene to refresh their memory,” Mr. Swan said. “We’ll say ‘In this episode, so-and-so was strangled, or shot.’ It’s quite exciting for them.”
