Local reaction to TV Shows set in their area

[mleach]

One of best friends lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. We were talking last night about classic TV shows and I brought up the Bonnie Franklin show One Day at a Time which was based in that city ( though like just about every TV show few if any scenes other than the opening credits were filmed in Indy ). He was saying that One Day really wasn't exactly "must see TV" in Indiana even though the show was based there. In other words people there didn't rush home to see Bonnie and her daughters nor did a lot people cared that the show was based in their city.

Wonder if this was the case with other shows that were set in other parts of the country like Alice ( Phoenix ), Mama's Family ( Raytown, Missouri ), WKRP ( of course..Cincinatti ), Dynasty ( Denver ), Mork and Mindy ( Boulder and somehwhat Denver ), Buffalo Bill ( Buffalo ), Happy Days & Laverne and Shirley ( Wisconsin ), Las Vegas ( many shows based there ) and so forth..

I know My Name is Earl is popular in Hagerstown-Cumberland, MD since one of the writers on that show is from that area and come to think of it I think Hagerstown was mentioned a few times on that show.

Of course Andy Griffith's classic sitcom is popular in the Carolinas and Virginia and didn't the Twin Cities embraced Mary Tyler Moore and her sitcom that was that based there?

On the flip side of this I wonder if there were cases of a city that said NO to the idea of a show being set in their city? The closest I can think of is Homicide: Life On The Street and Baltimore. Even though the show was based and actually filmed there, I believe some members of the Baltimore City council weren't happy that the show was filmed there because of fear that the show would protray Baltimore as a dangerous city and scare people from coming there. Of course the TV people ignored their "problem" and continued to film there

 

[Tim L]

How could you forget Drew Carey?..Mostly Clevelanders embraced "The Drew Carey Show" being set there..In the early years of the show, guests included then-Mayor Michael White, Retired Browns QB Bernie Kosar, and even some Personalities from ABC affiliate WEWS-TV..Carey could be funny but I think the show got a little too goofy as the years went on..

 

[mjdecastro]

Philadelphia Magazine did a piece in its March 2007 issue about the reaction of Scrantonians towards the US version of "The Office," set in Scranton, PA.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/office_party

 

[ShawnHill1]

In regards to the Dallas TV show, I was watching KDFW's 50th anniversary last week on YouTube (originally produced in 1999), and they were interviewing one of the station executives. He mentioned (and I'm paraphrasing here) that many of the people of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, at least ones he talked to, didn't particularily care for the show. This had to be despite the fact the show had very strong ratings, at least during the height of the show's popularity (early to mid-80s).

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

In regards to the Dallas TV show, I was watching KDFW's 50th anniversary last week on YouTube (originally produced in 1999), and they were interviewing one of the station executives. He mentioned (and I'm paraphrasing here) that many of the people of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, at least ones he talked to, didn't particularily care for the show. This had to be despite the fact the show had very strong ratings, at least during the height of the show's popularity (early to mid-80s).

I have read that as well, I think mostly because it was such an over-the-top portrayal of Texas and the Dallas area.

When Roseanne went into syndication, the then local Fox (now CBS) affiliate in Evansville, IN did a whole song-and-dance promo for the show mentioning it's Evansville connection. The outside shots of the Connor's house, the Third and Delaware street sign and several other outdoor shots (almost all the transitional still-stores between scenes) were taken in Evansville around the neighborhood of, yep, Third and Delaware (though the show was based in the fictional town of Lanford, IL).

Ratings wise, I don't know that the Evansville connection helped the show or not (since it wasn't "based" in Evansville, I don't know that most people even knew - until that promo aired - that the still stores were shot in Evansville).

 

[bierkenstock]

I've lived in a few towns where TV shows were set.

In most cases, it's clear the show was filmed in LA because everything looks like LA. And it's clear the writers are in LA and know nothing about the town where the show is supposed to be.

How come the Police HQ in Cold Case (Philadelphia) looks exactly like the FBI office building (LA) in Numb3rs?
How come when they have car chases in Without A Trace (New York) traffic is going one-way but streets have yellow lines down the middle and big blue California-style street signs on each corner?
How is it New York has alleys on TV shows but you go to Manhattan and an alley is harder to find than a public restroom?
And how is it New York has newspaper coin racks on every TV corner like LA but in the real world New York has newsstands for real newspapers and racks for throw-aways only? Jeez, put out coin racks in New York and somebody would steal all the papers and stand in the street and sell them.

I read an article in which the producer of Earl said "Camden" is fictional and is not Cumberland, Maryland (or Camden, NJ or Camden, SC). There is a Yuengling logo behind the bar suggesting Camden is somewhere in the East.

The Office seems to have done it's homework about Scranton.

For a town to embrace a show that's supposed to be set there, you have to feel like you are there when you're watching the show. Most shows could be anyplace whatever they call the town.

I Love Lucy was filmed on a sound-stage in Culver City but felt like New York.
Same for Seinfeld.
I could believe Mary was really in Minneapolis (despite the lack of Minnesota accents).
I could believe Frasier was in Seattle and Cheers was in Boston.
One Day At A Time was generic and could have been any place. Same for Laverne and Shirley and Happy Days, Mork and Mindy and the others mentioned.
Cosby was shot in New York but didn't feel like New York, thanks to LA writers. They just couldn't get New York expressions and ways of talking.
WKRP tried to capture the feel of Cincinnati. It didn't really do it but it did capture the feel of medium market radio (although medium market radio of 15 years or so before the series was shot) so I was willing to let it go.

Sitcoms seem to do a better job than cop shows of capturing the feel of a place even though sitcoms mostly take place inside and cop shows have a lot of exteriors. Maybe that's the problem. Exteriors set someplace else, especially on a studio street, almost never look completely right. One exception was NYPD Blue and Fox's New York streets built for "Hello, Dolly." ER feels like Chicago because they shoot a lot of exteriors on location. Same for Hill Street. Boston Legal/Practice/Boston Public/Ally McBeal had a Boston feel because they mostly stay inside and make good use of B unit shots. Same for St. Elsewhere. But most shows look like generic-LA.

 

[LKellerIII]

"One exception was NYPD Blue and Fox's New York streets built for "Hello, Dolly." ER feels like Chicago because they shoot a lot of exteriors on location."

I saw an interesting report once (Dateline NBC probably) about ER. They showed off the advanced technology (more lifelike that traditional blue screen) that allowed the actors to film a scene supposedly taking place outside on the streets of Chicago, strolling past well-known Chicago landmarks - that was really filmed on the sound stage...I presume in Hollywood.

So don't assume those exteriors that include the actors are actually shot on location. I believe the Law and Order shows are an exception to this, and are actually shot in New York, as was NYPD Blue.

 

[azumanga]

Apparently, doing homework on the series it's supposed to be set in really counts. Here's a couple of series that didn't do their homework:

"The Fitzpatricks" (1977) -- set in the mountainous steel town of Flint, Michigan. One thing, though -- Flint has no mountains (though it has gentle hills south of town), and it was a car town, not a steel town.

"Miami Guns" (2000) -- an anime series that takes place in Miami -- populated by Japanese, and within close driving distance to mountains and desert. See this Wikipedia article for more.

 

[Stanislav]

We used to have friends in Vermont, living not far from the inn in Middlebury that served for the exterior shots of the inn in "Newhart." Their assessment of the show was that, yes, you could probably find a similar (if not quite as extreme) motley group of oddballs in some small Vermont towns, but they hated that none of the locals spoke with anything even remotely resembling a Vermont accent, save for the Mayor (and they said he sounded more like a Mainer than a Vermonter).

 

[WMC2006]

I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina back when Dawson's Creek (based in a "small coastal Massachusetts town named Capeside") was filmed at a studio right in town. They did occasionally film in and around Wilmington as well. However, I don't ever recall there being any type of overwhelming desire from townspeople to watch the show and I never watched it myself. However (again), news anchors were always ready to report when a film crew and/or cast members were filming around and about town.

Might have been nice to run into Katie Holmes in her earlier years. Maybe I could have saved her from Tom Cruise. : ;D

 

[Ultimajock]

...I have yet to meet anyone impressed with the idea that "Happy Days" and "Laverne & Shirley" were set in Milwaukee, and I've lived in Wisconsin most of my life. The closest to enthusiasm that anyone has ever shown for any aspect of the shows' setting was some folks in Kenosha (my birthplace), about 30 miles south of Milwaukee, liking the idea of Kenosha native Al Molinaro being seen regularly on a show set in Wisconsin (Molinaro played Al on "Happy Days" and "Joanie Loves Chachi"). Remember, the '50s in Wisconsin was influenced more by Senator Joseph McCarthy than Elvis. Too many folks here remembered the reality before putting on the rose-coloured glasses...

 

[bk77]

In regards to the Dallas TV show, I was watching KDFW's 50th anniversary last week on YouTube (originally produced in 1999), and they were interviewing one of the station executives. He mentioned (and I'm paraphrasing here) that many of the people of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, at least ones he talked to, didn't particularily care for the show. This had to be despite the fact the show had very strong ratings, at least during the height of the show's popularity (early to mid-80s).

It was more/less the same thing with Denver, Colorado and Dynasty. For a city that gets more than their share of cold weather and snow ( Isn't Denver the biggest major city in the west part of the USA to get a lot a lot of snow? ) amazing that Dynasty never showed their characters roaming around in the snow.

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Apparently, doing homework on the series it's supposed to be set in really counts. Here's a couple of series that didn't do their homework:

"The Fitzpatricks" (1977) -- set in the mountainous steel town of Flint, Michigan. One thing, though -- Flint has no mountains (though it has gentle hills south of town), and it was a car town, not a steel town.

"Miami Guns" (2000) -- an anime series that takes place in Miami -- populated by Japanese, and within close driving distance to mountains and desert. See this Wikipedia article for more.

One of the funniest examples of this type of "non-research" I saw was in the short-lived NBC mini-series Kingpin about a Mexican drug lord and his family (NBC's stab at a Sopranos-style show).

One of the Kingpin's "Customers", a coke-addled physician played by Brian Benben, was being visited by his contact to pay up while the doctor was on the putting range at a golf course. Only thing was, as the camera was panning the background for its establishing shot, it was filming toward a clearly defined mountain vista in the background as the cg "Houston, Texas" came up.

Heh. There are no mountains within a hundred miles of Houston, Texas. The Houston area is basically a flat coastal plain, stretching for miles.

 

[DoctorBear]

I still laugh about the fact that the show "Picket Fences," set in the small town of Rome, Wis., had an episode concerned with the busing in of blacks ... from Green Bay!

At that time, discounting players on the Packers, you would have needed A bus.

 

[toby]

NYPD Blue was mainly filmed in Los Angeles, but they did some location shooting in NYC to mix in with the LA filmed parts.
CSI: NY does much the same, but it is even more obvious that they are filming in LA most of the time.

New Yorkers love Law & Order, probably because they actually film everything in NYC or the 25 mile zone (with the exception of the Homicide cross over episodes and the couple of episodes that were actually set in LA and filmed in part in LA) so we tend to give them a pass if they fudge locations a little, since it isn't like they are trying to pass of LA as NYC.

 

[hrhwebmaster]

Apparently, doing homework on the series it's supposed to be set in really counts. Here's a couple of series that didn't do their homework:

"The Fitzpatricks" (1977) -- set in the mountainous steel town of Flint, Michigan. One thing, though -- Flint has no mountains (though it has gentle hills south of town), and it was a car town, not a steel town.

"Miami Guns" (2000) -- an anime series that takes place in Miami -- populated by Japanese, and within close driving distance to mountains and desert. See this Wikipedia article for more.

One of the funniest examples of this type of "non-research" I saw was in the short-lived NBC mini-series Kingpin about a Mexican drug lord and his family (NBC's stab at a Sopranos-style show).

One of the Kingpin's "Customers", a coke-addled physician played by Brian Benben, was being visited by his contact to pay up while the doctor was on the putting range at a golf course. Only thing was, as the camera was panning the background for its establishing shot, it was filming toward a clearly defined mountain vista in the background as the cg "Houston, Texas" came up.

Heh. There are no mountains within a hundred miles of Houston, Texas. The Houston area is basically a flat coastal plain, stretching for miles.

Reminds me of a TV show, perhaps just this one episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0537782/ about Texas Rangers investigating a crime in Houston. One shot showed them going through a mountain pass, red lights and siren screaming, towing a horse trailer behind their squad car. The mountain pass could only have been in the Rockies, probably only a mock-up at that. There not only are no mountains within 100 miles of Houston, the only thing you find within 200 miles are gently rolling hills.

I don't recall much reaction to Houston Knights, the short lived series with Michael Pare and Michael Beck other than an appreciation of the fact the opening episode featured a popular local ice cream eatery, Dolce y Freddo. The accent of the Texas character - Beck? - was, as I recall, way overdone.

People here still get worked up over the fact we're the 4th largest city in the country but references commonly are to Houston, Texas, as though nobody knew where we were. People on a local forum regularly get worked up over any misinformation, even off-hand remarks by national sportscasters broadcasting games from local venues.

 

[searadiofreak]

I think one of the hottest TV fictional locations in recent years has got to be Seattle, on a number of different levels.

Frazier is one of highest rated syndicated sitcoms on the air right now, and while most of the filming took place in L.A., the cast made atleast a couple trips north to add to the authenticity. Plus, the show made a very sincere effort to look and feel like Seattle, even down to using actual Seattle newspapers that the cast members would read!

Grey's Anatomy is another example of a show that is mostly shot in L.A., but in the past season the cast has come up for location shooting!
(The whole Ferry Boat series, for example).

But what is most interesting is the huge number of films shot just north over the border in Vancouver, British Columbia that are "represented" as Seattle. Most viewers don't care, but native Seattleites are mostly annoyed by this. Not because Vancouver isn't photogenic, (it probably is more photogenic than Seattle at the end of the day), but just the fact that a Canadian city is standing in for Seattle! (I know there are similar issues with Toronto standing in for Chicago). But I would guess atleast 100 films and tv series have been filmed in BC, and represented as Seattle. Yes, many are "lifetime" movies, but even big, hollywood productions have done the same. Perhaps, Seattle should take a hard look at BC's production regs and learn something from them.

 

[Legend City]

Well, "Alice" wasn't too widely accepted in Phoenix. It made us look like a tiny hick Texas town on the side of an interstate.

At least Drew Carey made Cleveland look cool.

 

[rickradio]

Did anyone have any idea that "Eight Is Enough" was set in Sacramento?? I'm sure they made references from time to time, but whenever I would watch it, all I ever remembered seeing was the interior shots of the Bradford house, which was no doubt an LA soundstage. One exterior scene I remember was one of Adam Rich running out the front door and down the walkway to the curb, jumping into the car of one of the older brothers and pretending to drive it. The house did look like it was in the Fabulous 40s, though (a tony area of town with million-plus dollar homes), so they got that right, at least. But with all those kids (7 of 'em still lived at home), you'd think that ONE of them would have a radio on and tuned to either KROY or KXOA, ala the scene in "Midnight Cowboy" where Jon Voight has Ron Lundy's voice coming out of his transistor while listening to WABC on the way to New York. Does anyone remember hearing a KROY or KXOA jock coming out of one of the kids' radios?

On the other hand, "King Of Queens" did have that New York feel to it. But it wasn't so much the outside shots (like their house and Shea Stadium) as it was the actors themselves...Kevin James, Leah Remini and Jerry Stiller ARE native New Yorkers.

BTW, I NEVER knew that Dynasty was set in Denver until reading it here.

 

[KML0224]

"Chasing Amy" on CBS was set in the Hartford area, yet I heard almost nothing about the cast ever being here for exteriors and what not. Amy Brenneman, who starred in this show and was in the early episodes of "NYPD Blue", is a grad of Glastonbury (CT) High School, class of 1982. I watched the first episode to see what was shown from this area. I gave up after that. :-\