This is what is shown from the Douglas’s penthouse view. Is this actually a New York scene? It looks more like the PETRONAS towers toward the left.
Pretty unlikely as the Petronas Towers were built in 1996.
And also, they were built in Koala Lemur.
The comments on the Flickr page of the photo you linked to says the large black building is the Random House Building, 825 3rd Avenue, and the two taller towers back left of that are the Waldorf Astoria, 301 Park Avenue. Based on a look at Google Maps, that seems reasonable.
I can’t identify any others, but that’s a place to start, if you’re using Google Maps (or if you know the New York skyline).
This photo of the Waldorf-Astoria building seems to closely match the two-towered building shown in the TV shot.
Holy fuck, that’s Alf!
Looks like maybe from the Century Apartments or so on Central Park West around W 62nd.
A shot across a corner of the park gives a nicer view with no close buildings blocking the farther view.
This also fits with the theme song, I think.
There’s actually a whole sequence, if you can find the pilot (Season 1 available on DVD). He’s raising corn on his penthouse balcony (!) and she gets mad at him and starts tossing the flowerpots over the edge. (In New York anything can happen). Unfortunately this would have been a set in Hollywood, so the scenery is likely cardboard. He comes home from a business trip to tell her he “bought the farm! I got such a good deal! All the people there couldn’t believe it! They just kept repeating amazed ‘You bought the Haney place??’”
Here is the pilot. Looks like they are just using stock footage and backdrops.
Uh. . . yeah. . . thanks for the heads up.
And thanks everyone else. I have problems accessing a lot of photo-hosting sites, so I couldn’t get to all the stuff attached to it.
I just happened to watch the pilot today, courtesy of a weekend marathon on Antenna tv. The Douglas’s lived at a number of addresses in NYC before Oliver farmed the lower 40s.
If they could have afforded that apartment, why couldn’t they afford to fix up the house? If Mr. Haney was that good at ripping off city slickers shouldn’t he be spending a lot of his time in New York bleeding them dry?
Yes, that’s correct. And the blocky black and white building prominent in the middle is 777 3rd ave. (48 street) So the picture was taken from about 2nd ave and 51 st. looking SW.