# TV Shows with a strong "regional" sense **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 10, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428 "2012-02-10T16:52:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/81 "2012-02-12T15:22:44Z")
> [@postcards](#): > > > [@Zeldar](#): > > > > Rescue Me – Boston? > > NYC. Much obliged. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/82 "2012-02-12T16:26:23Z")
Here’s a sorted lost of the shows named through Post #81 Today, 09:22 AM The dupes (as best I could do) have been removed except for the shows where I don’t know enough to select the right “location.” I would appreciate any help in putting the 80+ shows in some categories to make polling easier or more logical. Until there’s a way to cope with the number in more meaningful bites, I’m waiting for help. ================================= All in the Family – Astoria (NYC?) Always Sunny in Philadelphia – “Philly” The Andy Griffith Show – North Carolina, specifically, Mount Airy, NC Blue Bloods – NYC The Bob Newhart Show – Chicago Bones – Washington, DC Breaking Bad – Desert Southwest (Albuquerque, New Mexico) Burn Notice – Miami Cheers – Boston Chicago Code – Chicago Chicago Hope – Chicago Corner Gas – Saskatchewan Coronation Street – Manchester CSI – Las Vegas Dallas – Dallas Detroit 1-8-7 – Detroit Dexter – Miami Dragnet (the 50s and 60s versions) – Los Angeles The Drew Carey Show – Cleveland ER – Chicago Family Ties – Ohio, with references to both Cincinnati and Cleveland Frasier – Seattle Friday Night Lights – West Texas Friday Night Lights – Midland/Odessa Texas Friends – NYC Green Acres – Hooterville Gunsmoke – western Happy Days – Milwaukee Happy Endings – Chicago Hawaii 5-0 – Hawaii Home Improvement – metro Detroit Homicide: Life on the Streets – Baltimore The Honeymooners – Bensonhurt, Brooklyn, in the Fifties Hot in Cleveland – Cleveland How I met Your Mother – NYC How I Met Your Mother – could have been any big city In Plain Sight – Albuquerque Justified – Kentucky The Killing – Seattle King of the Hill – North Texas/Houston/Austin/general Texas King of the Hill – Central Texas (within an hour of Austin – somewhere just north of it) King Of The Hill – Houston Suburbs – Richardson, TX, a suburb of Dallas Laverne & Shirley – Milwaukee Law & Order (the original) – NYC Life on Mars – Manchester (England) Little House on the Prairie – western Louie - New York Mad Men – NYC Magnum, P.I. – Hawaii M_A_S\*H – the mountains around southern California The Mentalist – different locations over a large area of California Miami Vice – Miami The Middle – Indiana Mike & Molly – Chicago Mork & Mindy – Denver Mork and Mindy – Boulder My Name is Earl – Camden County (unincorporated area or something)(loosely based on Waldorf, Maryland) Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Twin Cities (Minnesota?) Nash Bridges – San Francisco Northern Exposure – Alaska NYPD Blue – NYC The Office – Scranton, Pa. parks and rec – pawnee Petticoat Junction – Hooterville Portlandia – Oregon Rawhide – western The Red Riding trilogy - Leeds, West Yorkshire Rescue Me – NYC Rhoda – NYC Roseanne – Michigan Roseanne – in the rust belt somewhere Roseanne – Lanford, IL – generic Midwest Roseanne – Illinois, not Michigan Royal Pains – the Hamptons Saturday Night Live – NYC Seinfeld – NYC The Simpsons – the State that Springfield is in Six Feet Under – LA The Sopranos – New Jersey Southland – LA Spin City – NYC Streets of San Francisco – SF That 70s Show – Small Town, USA – Point Place, WI, was in fact inspired by Dunkirk, NY 30Rock – NYC Twin Peaks – Pacific Northwest Wagon Train – western The Waltons – Appalachian mountains of Virginia Whitney – chicago Will and Grace – NYC Wings – Nantucket (The island and, to a lesser extent, coastal Massachusetts) The Wire – Baltimore WKRP – some level of Cincinnati/Ohio references ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/83 "2012-02-12T16:50:37Z")
Trailer Park Boys – the Maritimes ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/84 "2012-02-12T20:04:28Z")
I thought _ **The Rockford Files** _ definitely captured part of what defined Southern California in the Seventies. ---
**Author:** ![Labdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/85 "2012-02-13T14:52:14Z")
"Law and Order was not only set in NYC, it was pretty much filmed on location there. On the other hand, “Designing Women” was set in Atlanta, and I never got any sense of Atlanta from that show. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/86 "2012-02-13T15:30:32Z")
The Beverly Hillbillies 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/87 "2012-02-13T15:34:04Z")
> [@Zeldar](#): > > It may just be a bit of jadedness on my part, but I tend to dismiss the NYC and LA “regionalism” component, unless it’s stressed as a main feature of the show. One exception I can think of is the excellent _Southland_ where LA is essential to how the show comes across. I’m not arguing with your list, and would certainly include them in the poll, but I see them as not all that strongly tied to _place_ as other shows. Thanks for the response. I agree. New York and LA are usually just used to add plausibility and “realness” to a show - and LA is a distant second, mostly in shows where showbiz is looking at itself. It’s all probably intended to go down easy with media industry people. For many, NY/LA simply _is_ the real world, with NY realest of all. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/88 "2012-02-13T16:07:53Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > Seinfeld sucks as a NYC show. > > Some of the exteriors, like Jerry’s apartment, were shot in LA and look it. > > The street sets look nothing like Manhattan–they look like sets. The parking space where George and Mike what’s his name are competing, for example, for looks nothing like a Manhattan street. > > And don’t get me started on the interiors. Jerry’s apartment is far too spacious for a struggling comedian. He’d need three roommates for a place that big. (Unless he’s a multimillionaire comic like Seinfeld, which Seinfeld isn’t). There’s a lot of truth to his but for me, the characters scream New York which over shadows everything else. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/89 "2012-02-13T17:54:57Z")
I thought **The West Wing** nailed DC in a way that **227** and **The District** didn’t. There have been some other DC-set shows that really dropped the ball, the most notorious being **Wonder Woman** (No palm trees line Massachusetts Avenue). **NCIS** occasionally surprises me with convincing settings in the Virginia suburbs. **The X-Files** rarely did; I couldn’t think of a single building in Takoma Park that could house the Lone Gunmen’s HQ. **Murphy Brown** got DC pretty well. **That’s My Bush** did not. I enjoyed **Newhart** a lot, but wonder if any Vermonters recognized themselves among those odd characters. I did like the witches’ coven his wife accidentally joined that one time (“If you wanna be a witch, ya gotta marry the devil!”). Seattle had a wonderful sketch comedy show 20-odd years ago called **Almost Live** which not only caught the vibe of the city, but skewered specific neighborhoods and suburbs pretty deftly. It was kind of the **Portlandia** of its day. The show was briefly repackaged for Comedy Central, but all the regionalisms were bleached out of it and a lot of viewers had to wonder what the big deal was. At least **Bill Nye, Science Guy** spun off of it. SCTV sure had a regional sense, though I guess it’s a little patronizing to call Canada a “region.” ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/90 "2012-02-13T18:28:52Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I grew up in a speciic neighborhood in New York City, but rarely felt as if most TV shows set in New York really captured my neighborhood or accurately portrayed the kind of people I gew up around. > > _ **The Honeymooners** _ certainly captured Bensonhurt, Brooklyn, in the Fifties. > > _ **All in the Family** _ OCCASIONALLY rang true… I definitely knew a lot of real people in Astoria who talked like Archie. But there was way too much the show DIDN’T get right about Astoria (Archie never seemed to run into any GREEKS, for one thing!). Also: What was Archie’s ethnicity? You might say Irish because of O’Connor. And the character’s accent and xenophobia ring true with the workingclass Irish stereotype. But he bitched about the Micks and Catlickers right along with everybody else he bitched about. Another show set in New York, but not admitting it, was _Laverne and Shirley_, which took place in either the Milwaukee section of Brooklyn or the Brooklyn section of Milwaukee. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/91 "2012-02-13T18:37:49Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > **Murphy Brown** got DC pretty well. It think it could easily have been set in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Minneapolis. The exterior establishment shot of the network building was definitely not in Washington, D.C. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/92 "2012-02-13T19:18:54Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Another show set in New York, but not admitting it, was _Laverne and Shirley_, which took place in either the Milwaukee section of Brooklyn or the Brooklyn section of Milwaukee. Well, the show was created by Garry Marshall, an Italian-American from Chicago… but Garry cut his teeth in show biz writing jokes for Jewish Borscht Belt comics like Phil Foster (he repaid Foster years later by giving him the role of Laverne’s Dad). Hence, even when Marshall’s shows are set in the Midwest, they ofen have an unmistakeably New York Jewish feel. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/93 "2012-02-13T19:27:44Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Also: What was Archie’s ethnicity? You might say Irish because of O’Connor. And the character’s accent and xenophobia ring true with the workingclass Irish stereotype. But he bitched about the Micks and Catlickers right along with everybody else he bitched about. That’s a very fair point. The anti-Catholic jokes MAY have been a carryover from the old British series\*\*\* Til Death Do Us Part.\*\*\* They certainly don’t make much sense in a blue-collar New Yorker. After all ,Archie was supposed to have grown up in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. By then, New York was ALREADY heavily Irish and Italian. In the British series, Alf Garnett was a working class Protestant to whom Catholics were some kind of exotic invaders who threatened to change the makeup of his neighborhood. But Catholics certainly weren’t exotic outsiders in New York during the time of Archie Bunker’s childhood. I was born in 1961- so, when I was a kid, Astoria was largely Irish and ITalian, with a large number of elderly German Lutherans still hanging on. By the time I was in high school, the Irish were mostly gone, and the neighborhood was overwhelmingly Greek and Italian. As I said, I grew up among a lot of people who talked like Archie Bunker! THAT part rang true. But the show NEVER gave any kind of feel for the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood. All those years in Astoria, and Archie never made a single crack about those greasy Greek neighbors and their smelly souvlaki stands??? ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/94 "2012-02-13T20:38:59Z")
**PSYCH** is set in, and appears to be filmed in, Santa Barbara. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/95 "2012-02-13T20:50:41Z")
I suspect that Curb Your Enthusiasm gives you a pretty solid feel of life with the rich Hollywood side of Los Angeles culture – the places they go, the things they do. So I’d say it’s strongly regional, although the behavior displayed therein is farcical. ---
**Author:** ![Registered\_at\_Last](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc79bd/32.png) [@Registered\_at\_Last](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Registered_at_Last)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/96 "2012-02-13T20:55:35Z")
A few Canadian shows are unabashedly regional: Older shows: \*\*The Beachcombers \*\*- Coastal British Columbia \*\*King of Kensington \*\*- Toronto - Kensington to be precise \*\*Da Vinci’s Inquest \*\*- Vancouver Current ones: \*\*Being Erica \*\*- Toronto, show website even has a map pinpointing where in various plot events occur \*\*Republic of Doyle \*\*- St. John’s Newfoundland \*\*Little Mosque on the Prairie \*\*- Saskatchewan ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/97 "2012-02-13T21:04:54Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > That’s a very fair point. The anti-Catholic jokes MAY have been a carryover from the old British series\*\*\* Til Death Do Us Part.\*\*\* They certainly don’t make much sense in a blue-collar New Yorker. > > After all ,Archie was supposed to have grown up in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. By then, New York was ALREADY heavily Irish and Italian. > > In the British series, Alf Garnett was a working class Protestant to whom Catholics were some kind of exotic invaders who threatened to change the makeup of his neighborhood. But Catholics certainly weren’t exotic outsiders in New York during the time of Archie Bunker’s childhood. > > I was born in 1961- so, when I was a kid, Astoria was largely Irish and ITalian, with a large number of elderly German Lutherans still hanging on. By the time I was in high school, the Irish were mostly gone, and the neighborhood was overwhelmingly Greek and Italian. > > As I said, I grew up among a lot of people who talked like Archie Bunker! THAT part rang true. But the show NEVER gave any kind of feel for the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood. All those years in Astoria, and Archie never made a single crack about those greasy Greek neighbors and their smelly souvlaki stands??? Anti-Irish jokes might have been a carry-over, but I don’t really remember any from TDUP and they wouldn’t have been about them being Catholic. Catholics also weren’t exotic outsiders in London even 90 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/98 "2012-02-13T21:08:40Z")
I’m surprised that no one mentioned Taxi yet, for NYC. Also: I Dream Of Jeannie—Coco Beach Northern Exposure—small Alaskan town Superman—NYC Batman—Gotham City 😉 ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/99 "2012-02-13T22:15:56Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Anti-Irish jokes might have been a carry-over, but I don’t really remember any from TDUP and they wouldn’t have been about them being Catholic. Catholics also weren’t exotic outsiders in London even 90 years ago. Not being English, I couldn’t say. I only know that, while 1. There are places in the Southern U.S. where fundamentalist Protestants still view Catholics with suspicion (even viewing them as “not really Christian”), and 2. In the Eighteenth century, there were many American Protestants who demonized Catholics as foreign troublemakers (the phrase “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” comes to mind)… Such anti-Catholicism was long dead and gone in the Northern states by the time Archie Bunker was supposed to be born. His anti-Catholicism never made much sense. I thought MAYBE it might have made more sense in the character of Alf Garnett… but maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428/100 "2012-02-13T22:36:51Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Not being English, I couldn’t say. > > I only know that, while > > 1. There are places in the Southern U.S. where fundamentalist Protestants still view Catholics with suspicion (even viewing them as “not really Christian”), and > > 2. In the Eighteenth century, there were many American Protestants who demonized Catholics as foreign troublemakers (the phrase “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” comes to mind)… > Such anti-Catholicism was long dead and gone in the Northern states by the time Archie Bunker was supposed to be born. His anti-Catholicism never made much sense. > > I thought MAYBE it might have made more sense in the character of Alf Garnett… but maybe not. Not really. On the mainland, Catholic vs. Protestant hasn’t been an issue for a few hundred years. Anti-Irish certainly, especially in Alf Garnett’s time, with the IRA and all, but it’s not a religious thing - at least, not in anti-Irish jokes. Anti-Catholicism is not one of the -isms you’d expect a bigot to adhere to. Actually, technically the PM can’t be Catholic, and the monarch can’t be one or marry one. The latter makes some sense, since the monarch is the head of the Church of England, but the former is an anachronism that doesn’t really carry over into everyday life and I bet it’ll be fixed soon enough. The one Alf Garnett scene I remember in a church is when he was asking the vicar, tentatively, whether in the afterlife he’d be reunited with his second wife or his first and was really worried about it; it was quite touching. I just looked up a couple of Alf Garnett clips and it was like Daily Mail commentators come to life. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-shows-with-a-strong-regional-sense/612428.md?page=6)