A video game, not a movie/TV show, but it’s strongly narrative and attempts to represent its setting realistically, so I think it’s worth discussing.
The Last of Us Part 2 is set mostly in and around Seattle. And if you’re not actually from there, it feels like it’s pretty accurate. The street layout is surprisingly close to reality (with a few minor compromises that are necessary for gameplay and therefore acceptable). The Needle, the sports stadiums, the Smith Tower, the waterfront aquarium and the neighboring Ferris wheel, even the Koolhaas library are all more or less in the right place. The city buses have the right design and color scheme. And so on.
But if you are a longtime local, there’s a bunch of deep-tissue stuff that tells you the game’s design team did not include anyone from Seattle, and that their research mostly amounted to looking at maps and “touring” the city via Google Street View.
(Note that these complaints are just about the city’s representation, and are not about the game itself. On that level, I think it’s a groundbreaking instant classic, and a master class in marrying thematic ambition to conventional game mechanics, and I’ll defend it against all comers. So please don’t get the wrong idea.)
Some examples:
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During one sequence, you pass through a large passenger-and-vehicle ferry that’s been beached near downtown. In the pilothouse, you find a journal that describes the boat’s route from California up the coastline to Seattle. An outsider may think nothing of this, but Pacific Northwesterners know this is a Washington State Ferry, which transits exclusively between ports in the relative safety of Puget Sound. Not only are these ferries never taken past Anacortes in actual practice, they simply aren’t seaworthy on the open ocean, and wouldn’t last a day in the conditions of the Pacific.
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As you explore the streets of post-apocalyptic Seattle, you of course have to weave around all the abandoned trucks and passenger cars. Again, the outsider won’t notice anything unusual, but the Seattleite might realize something about the setting feels wrong. Basically, the proportions of the cars are off. There are too many light trucks and distinctly American-styled sedans, and not nearly enough higher-end SUVs or all-weather cars like Subarus and Volvos.
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The waterfront aquarium I mentioned above is open for exploration. Its exterior styling isn’t quite right, with a playground and a big fiberglass octopus, but that’s a cosmetic detail, and forgivable. Inside, though, there is an enormous pool with a stage and bleacher seats, like you’d find at Sea World. It is absolutely unthinkable in Seattle culture that there would be a circus-animal type presentation permanently installed downtown. It would be the target of fierce and vociferous citizen opposition, and would attract immediate attention from local politicos even in the planning stages. It’s a non-starter, and one of the real giveaways that the game’s design team didn’t actually know their setting.
(There’s also a sequence that takes the player into Seattle’s sewer system, which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual sewers of the city. But hardly anybody has ever been down there to know why this is wrong, so I’m more willing to accommodate that little flight of fancy.)
Again, though, these are just annoyances, and I still do very much enjoy the game. I just have to ignore the fact that its Seattle isn’t, y’know, Seattle.
These are the kinds of things that come to mind, regarding the OP’s question. Compromises on superficial aspects of geography don’t bother me that much. But I definitely notice when the storytellers are violating fundamental aspects of their setting due to ignorance or laziness and inappropriately projecting their own assumptions and experience into the location. A street in the wrong place? Eh, don’t care. The end of the Tomb Raider reboot movie, which has Lara Croft buying handguns off the shelf in a London shop? That’s a chuckle.
