I received for Christmas the entire series run of Friday Night Lights, which is supposed to be a pretty good representation of West Texas culture.
I don’t know yet because I’m currently working through Six Feet Under, which is LA through-and-through.
shakes fist You beat me to it! It was like looking in a mirror.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 always kept pretty close to its low budget, small market Twin Cities origins. Even the movie seemed very simple in its production values.
Life on Mars is set in Manchester (England). There was a US remake, but it tanked.
That 70s Show seems pretty Wisconsin to me. Lots of Packers fans, the Canadian border, the iconic “Hello Wisconsin” at the end of the song…
The Andy Griffith Show–rural North Carolina
Happy Days and* Laverne & Shirley*–Milwaukee
Missed edit window.
Cheers–Boston
Mork & Mindy–Denver
Roseanne–Michigan
The Bob Newhart Show-Chicago
Saturday Night Live–NYC
Coming at it another way, The Mentalist does a halfway decent job at portraying different locations the show takes place in. They aren’t always very accurate, but it gives a good sense that they need to actually work over a large area (and to help dispel the idea that California = LA).
Nash Bridges was a show that used its San Francisco location well. Instead of belaboring the point in the show, they simply shot it there, and the accuracy gave it authenticity. It’s not just location shooting that made this work; by comparison the short-lived emergency/rescue show from a few years back (whose name escapes me) that spent a lot on location shots still failed to establish a sense of place.
These shows could be set anywhere IMHO and not lose anything. Except for maybe Roseanne, which really had to be set in the rust belt somewhere.
But those first four took place mostly in indoor settings, without much reference to the cities in which they took place. WKRP was supposed to be in Cincinnati, but you never saw the city or the characters’ interactions with it. Same for Frasier in Seattle.
ETA: Or what Ike Witt said.
I’m willing to argue that King of the Hill is set solidly in Central Texas, within an hour of Austin. Somewhere just north of it. The landmarks put it there.
And his house number (704 Hauser St) wasn’t hyphenated, as are all house numbers in Queens.
My contributions: NYPD Blue and Rescue Me.
Okay, people, we’re going to have one largish poll from all this. I want some guidance on at least these issues:
Input needed!
In Cheers, Sam and Coach both have ties to the Red Sox organization–Sam is a washed up pitcher trying to cash in on his sports fame to make the bar profitable. He wasn’t that great a player, so the only place he could do that would be Boston.
Roseanne is set in Lanford, IL. There’s really no regional sense in the show aside from them being Bears and Bulls fans. It’s just supposed to be generic Midwest.
Friday Night Lights was set in Midland/Odessa Texas.
The Waltons was set in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia
The Andy Griffith Show was set in North Carolina, specifically, Mount Airy, NC
I disagree about Cheers and SNL. Cheers was obviously Boston, with Sam being an ex-Red Sox player, constant references to Boston sports (Celtics, Bruins, and of course the Sox) and so much of the humor in SNL is NYC-specific: A comedy skit show based in, say, Atlanta would have never come up with a sketch like “Coffee Talk” or the NPR skits.
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).
No mention yet of Miami Vice?
But Cheers could easily be set in Chicago or New York or Toronto or Cleveland or any number of cities if you just change the ball club Sam played for. It was important that Sam was a former up ballplayer, not that he was a former Red Sox.
They did reveal the location, Camden County. They never named a city, but I just figured they were in some sort of unincorporated area or something. Anyway, they’re near enough to Natesville that Patty the daytime hooker can go over there for her Gambling Incognito meetings.
Roseanne was set in Lanford, Illinois. David and Mark’s mother moved to Michigan at one point, which was basically just a plot point for David moving in with the Connors, but that’s the only time Michigan figured into the show at all that I can recall.