In the thread “Subtle inaccuracies in depictions of your city/region in fiction” many of the examples are of shows that were filmed in places that don’t really look like the place they’re supposed to be set. I mentioned Breaking Bad as a counterexample, as a show that actually was filmed where it was set (or perhaps more accurately, set where it was filmed, since Vince Gilligan decided to change the setting to Albuquerque after deciding to shoot in New Mexico for financial reasons).
So, not wanting to further hijack that thread, what are some other shows or movies that actually were filmed where they were supposed to be set?
In the other thread @kitap mentioned Forever Knight as a show that was both filmed and set in Toronto.
As I recall The Walking Dead is both set and filmed in Georgia.
I’m sure there is a ton of stuff that was set in Los Angeles and also filmed there. Probably the same for New York. Law and Order and its spinoffs are shot in New York, I believe.
ETA: And since I mentioned Breaking Bad, I guess Better Call Saul should also be included.
Most Matlock episodes were supposedly located in Atlanta, but filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. However, one episode had Matlock vacationing in Wilmington.
I find some of the plots and characterizations in Bosch to be very tiresome, but I can never get enough of the non-landmark LA locations that I instantly recognize: Strip malls, restaurants, apartment buildings, even parking lots.
Val Kilmer’s The Saint was actually filmed in Moscow, resulting in some bizarre transitions to anyone familiar with the city’s geography.
The “American Embassy” was actually the Peking Hotel on Mayakovsky Square (the real one is a bit farther down the Garden Ring), and the river Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue were dunked in was the Yauza.
The Russia House was also filmed in Moscow when I was a grad student there. One of the girls on my dorm floor (a Finn) actually met Sean Connery in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying and got to shake his hand.
Many of the scenes were shot on the days noted in Winston Smith’s diary. The scene where Smith enters his apartment and writes in his diary, dating the entry April 4, 1984, was filmed on April 4, 1984.
The movie was filmed during April, May, and June 1984. The closing credits declare that “This film was photographed in and around London during the period April-June 1984, the exact time and setting imagined by the author George Orwell.”
I don’t remember if the location was ever mentioned specifically, but Drop Dead Fred was clearly set (and filmed) in Minneapolis and St Paul. I saw the movie when I was living in Czechoslovakia and couldn’t believe my eyes!
Any Werner Herzog movie you care to name. He was a big believer in what he called the “Voodoo of Location.” Even in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, those actors really were in South America hauling stuff over the Andes.
There are tons of movies that are shot in Toronto but disguise the setting as some American city, so it was memorable to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World be openly shot and set in Toronto for once.
1954 movie “Riot in Cell Block 11” was filmed at San Quentin prison in California. One of the actors, Leo Gordon, was incarcerated there five years for armed robbery and the warden was initially reluctant to allow him there.
The Heist, with Pierce Brosnan, was set and filmed in San Diego, featuring the Del Mar Racetrack (where the surf meets the turf) as well as the Pacific Beach pier and the Mexican border crossing. Better yet, travel-times between the various locales were all correct. Fun movie.
There was an early McCloud that stuck out to me. McCloud was chasing some suspect around a railroad yard. In some camera setups, you could clearly see the World Trade Center in the background, and the locomotives and cars were all primarily east cost lines. But then McCloud runs between cars and right past a Santa Fe locomotive. Who would go to that much trouble to fly the lead actor back and forth across country, especially for a scene that could (should) have just been filmed completely in one of the locations.
Kojak seemed to film in actual NYC and then on a NYC backlot, sometimes in the same scene.
Early season Adam-12 episodes were filmed in the Universal backlot, which means they were actually filmed in the proper location (Los Angeles) but not actually on location. This had the weird issue of making it look like it was filmed in NYC, because actual LA looks nothing like the backlot.
The four series in Dick Wolf’s Chicago franchise (Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, and Chicago Justice) are all filmed in Chicago – a combination of location shooting, and interior shoots at the Cinespace Chicago studio.
@Just_Asking_Questions’ mention of Adam-12 reminded me – the TV series Emergency! was filmed on location at a Los Angeles County fire station (Station 127, standing in for the fictional Station 51). My wife visited Station 127 a few years ago – the station stills get fans of the TV show who show up, and they sell commemorative T-shirts.
