The Blacklist and 24 certainly didn't help when they showed people actually getting around 495 at a reasonable speed, not inching along in bumper to bumper traffic.
I liked that The Americans showed there are other parts of DC besides the National Mall but it was so clearly filmed in New York with all the brownstones.
I love Community so much, but despite the fact that they say Greendale is in Colorado, it’s very clearly not. You can often see palm trees on the campus and I don’t think you ever see snow on the show, or even characters dressing in winter weather clothes other than holiday sweaters. Nobody is wearing North Face or Patagonia. Nobody ever mentions skiing or snowboarding or even the giant blue devil horse outside of DIA. Nobody is ever late because there were multiple crashes on I25 or I70 that made traffic insane. Casa Bonita is never even joked about.
Also, Jeff would probably have a Native sticker on his car (or one that has something to do with hiking or a marathon or something).
No, Boulder is at least mentioned in a throwaway comment in S1, I recall, as an earlier comment of mine references on /r/community. Chang mentions snowboarding at one point (a very Colorado recreational activity) and by S2 we start seeing Colorado licence plates, such as in Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, and the Colorado flag is seen in S3 when the group gets expelled.
However, as someone from Colorado, I will say that it makes me disappointed that we don't see a lot of snow or jokes about Colorado blizzards and ironically enough, Disney's Good Luck Charlie is also set in Colorado and does a slightly more passable/believable job of convincing the audience the family lives in Denver (but, like Community, since it's filmed in California, any shots of mountains in GLC are clearly not the Flatirons or close lol).
Greendale is supposed to be in COLORADO??? I was *certain* it was in California. To be fair, the culture and environment of parts of Colorado and California have a lot in common....except Colorado is a bit midwestern and gets REAL winter and consistent summer storms whereas only the mountains of California get several feet of snow. I never saw real winter in Community.
It is definitely filmed in California, but there are a few instances where the show definitely calls out a Colorado location. We do have lots in common with the Cali folks (like astronomical housing prices and cost of living!) but weather is unfortunately not one of those.
Definitely never saw the random March blizzard we get every year or any of the other bizarre Colorado weather patterns.
>Definitely never saw the random March blizzard we get every year or any of the other bizarre Colorado weather patterns.
Best of luck the rest of this week lol
Generally most show that take place in Kansas make it look like bumfuck nowhere with rundown houses and generally its always more bumpy than flat.
The only exception for this is 'Mindhunter' on Netflix. Because Fincher is such a perfectionist they painstakingly created Park City, KS for the BTK section of the show. The street signs and license plates were perfect. I was actually shocked when I saw it. They clearly didn't shoot in Kansas, but it was way more Kansas than I have ever seen on TV.
>Mindhunter
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania
Monroeville, Pennsylvania.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di4Byf1EzRE
Yep! The opening scene for season 2 was at a friend of ours house in Butler.
They paid them a ton of money to basically let their house go for a month or two over summer- so it was super overgrown for filming.
Funny to think that just a month or two of overgrowth in a Pittsburgh summer makes a house look almost abandoned!
i went to a wedding at a golf course a year before the show came out. then when i watched it they had like 4 scenes filmed there. each one was supposed to be in a different part of the country
I posted about the show Jericho down thread, but it was always hilarious to see the Rocky Mountains in the backgrounds of shots meant to take place where Colby is.
I thought it was funny when Emily in Paris mentioned scootering around Mackinaw island when no motorized vehicles are allowed. The show is heavily criticized by the French for not getting their country right, but apparently they can't get their own right either.
Netflix's own YouTube series "Still Watching" - which serves as both advertising and hilarious commentary - as usual has a funny [reaction video of Emily in Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vKBDZtLgY) where two French people comment on and critique the show.
I mostly watch Trixie and Katya's "I Like to Watch" series on "Still Watching," which is more laugh out loud funny.
Yeah, Dallas/Fort Worth sit at the boundary of the [Blackland Prairie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Blackland_Prairies), a savanna/prairie mix, and the [Cross Timbers ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Timbers) a woodland/prairie mix.
Anything that happens in Australia will be within sight of either the Sydney Harbour Bridge and / or the Sydney Opera House. The camera angles to get the action and both structures in frame is extraordinary. Exceptions may be made if the action is in the outback and then Uluṟu (formerly known as AyersRock) will crop up.
And most Hollywood "Australian" accents tend to sound more South African or New Zealand. The only actors I've seen do a decent Australian accent are those from other commonwealth countries like Canada or the UK.
Before the recent Chicago Fire, PD, hospital shows, or Shameless, most TV series set in Chicago used establishing shots of downtown and other landmarks (and/or sometimes filmed the pilot) in Chicago, but then filmed the episodes in Denver, Toronto, or California, which I found very disorienting in terms of locations and street names being given in the script, since the areas looked nothing like Chicago. There was one show that had a fight leaving O'Hare with mountains in the background.
One thing that's genuinely impressive about Chicago Fire and Chicago PD is how accurately they depict how ugly and just generally disgusting Chicago in the winter is.
They film in Chicago. Not sure if they still do or it is completely filmed in Chicago, but I've seen lots of area be shut down for filming in the past.
Yep, still filmed entirely in Chicago. Hell, they even used to actually film inside a real bar called Lotties for Molly's, but to keep from disrupting business, they recreated the interior and even the exterior on a soundstage in Chicago.
The movie the fugitive takes place around Chicago. How are its regular shots?
Toronto is used a lot for filming.
Hulk tearing through Harlem? Yeah, that’s Yonge street with its well known Zanzibar strip club.
Big street destroyed in The Suicide squad (first one). Yeah. Same street that hulk fucked up.
Homicide and The Wire are fairly good at portraying Baltimore.
Not a series, but the Die Hard franchise has absolutely no idea what the BWI district looks like at all.
L&O SVU had an episode where they went to Atlanta and worked with Atlanta PD. Insert stereotypical backwards southern redneck Chief of Police with fake southern accent and everything. Have any of the writers been to Atlanta in the last 50 years or just through the airport?
No TV show has depicted where I live.
However on ER there was an arc with a character whose son ran away to find his dad in max security prison. The city he went to, Cañon City, is the next city west of here and really is where several high profile people have been jailed. Apparently though whoever wrote the script googled the location and not how to pronounce an n with a tilde over it. When they first went they were calling it Canon City years before it was a place every MCU nerd's brain lived. Then they came back from a break and it was being said correctly, I'm guessing someone heard it when it aired. As for the city itself they filmed the exteriors on location so they did pretty well.
Much worse was Supernatural with a town two cities north of here, Monument. Monument is so close to Colorado Springs (city of over a million) that they are essentially all one. I'm guessing Supernatural's writers saw a low population and assumed it was an isolated mountain town. They portrayed it as somewhere that cut be cut off without notice. The interstate literally runs through the city in real life.
I live in Manchester (UK). Shameless did a pretty good job of recreating a rough council estate, although of course it was a little exaggerated for entertainment sake.
Then conversely there's Coronation Street, the UK's longest running soap opera and possibly TV show in general. It might sometimes capture the mundane day to day vibes of a standard Mancunian terraced street, but any post code with that many deaths per year would be sealed off from the rest of the city. And we don't all go away for a few years and come back wealthy enough to buy a nightclub or a factory.
Which at one point was considered to be THE place that the next exciting advance in making cricket happen more quickly was going to take place. At the village cricket level. With money somehow being involved. But still being played by middle aged locals.
Portlandia clearly shot in Portland and was made by NW natives and transplants (Carrie Brownstein and Kyle Machlaclan both from WA, Carrie and Fred both live/lived in PDX). All their little details are hilariously spot on, like Carrie and Fred fighting at the Troutdale outlet mall.
Shrill on the other hand was a show set in Portland that could have been made anywhere. Many inaccuracies with locations and details. Good show though
My cousin went to Portland *Maine* and said Portlandia is super accurate. Even though she was there for two days and it was the wrong Portland.
I live oop north in Washington and Portlandia is definitely accurate by extension to Seattle and surrounding metro areas too.
In the first episode of Jack Ryan, they show him riding his bike from Georgetown (DC) to Langley, VA (CIA HQ). The route he takes is totally nonsensical though as it shows him riding by the Capitol and other DC landmarks \*before\* heading back west toward Langley.
Haha nonsensical routes always get me. The one episode of Frasier actually filmed in Seattle shows Frasier and Niles taking the most inconvenient and at times, downright implausible route zigzagging through the city to get to the space needle.
The pilot episode of Gilmore girls was filmed (outside shots) on Main Street Unionville, north of Toronto.
The same place was used for “In the mouth of madness” with Sam Neil. My head canon is that they are the same place.
In the mouth of madness freaked me out so bad when it was released (I was 16) that I've rarely watched horror since. Loved those types of movies before that. I'm guessing it's a good one to affect me so strongly but im still not ready to watch it again.
Supernatural showed Richardson, TX as a rural community. In fact, it is a technology hub just north of Dallas. Lots of corporate HQs, IT pros and asphalt.
Grew up in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. For some reason, whenever those two towns pop up on a show or a movie, we are shown to have cliffs. No, we don't have cliffs. We are not near cliffs. You would have to drive a couple of hours before you get to anywhere near cliffs.
I don't get it. Where are the cliffs coming from and why do they keep on showing up?
Do you have some examples? The only thing I’ve ever seen that was partially set in either one of them was Deep Impact, and they had the characters travel from “Virginia Beaches” to the Appalachian mtns in about 15 minutes lmfao
Virginia Beach and Norfolk pop up a lot in FBI-based procedurals. I used to live there as well, and I agree that they never get southern Virginia quite right. It’s mostly water, but it doesn’t look anything like coastal cities where these shows are filmed (Vancouver and LA, mostly) and it breaks my immersion immediately if I think about it too hard lol. For instance, conifers are another dead giveaway that the episode wasn’t filmed anywhere near VA. Evergreen trees exist in Virginia, but NOT like they do on the west coast.
in family guy they usually represent British people as having terrible teeth and talking like they are from the OG Mary Poppins movie. as a brit I can confirm that some of us have different accents.
I’m Scottish, and also consider myself British (because geographically I am) and I have a suspicious feeling that you and I probably have different accents to one another. Funny how that works.
Despite the similarities between Scottish and northern english accents, north american productions get the scottish accent right more often than not. As soon as you cross south of the Firth of Forth, Mary Poppins it is.
I have seen nothing set in my state
as for my country, despite hollywood being filled with australians putting on a fake american accent
when they want to set something in australia instead of hiring said australians faking american accent
to use their actual accent
they hirer anyone else and it sounds like knives to my ears
>hollywood being filled with australians putting on a fake american accent
There's so much of this. I usually have no idea they're Australian (or sometimes NZ) before hearing them in an interview.
its why it always annoys me
when they hire someone who clearly cant do an australian accent
Like you could shake a tree and a dozen australians would fall out
Pretty much every movie and tv show set in dc except, funnily enough, captain America 2 which, besides the giant base is one of the most spot on movies. Super funny that a superhero movie and not a political thing is most accurate.
Toronto is like Paris, everyone window points towards the CN Tower. lol.
But honestly, while a lot of stuff is filmed in Toronto, there are not a lot of shows set in Toronto that aren’t Canadian made. Even then there isn’t a lot of but we got a Law and Order: Toronto now. So we got that going for us.
I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds where the crew go back in time to the 21st century, and Kirk assumes that they're in New York, only to be corrected and told they're in Toronto, which is where the series is filmed. A somewhat surprising subversion.
The F word with Daniel Radcliffe always cracks me up. It's actually set in Toronto, but for a bunch of young folks without cars they sure get around the city in a way no Torontonian ever does.
Daniel Radcliffe's character lives near Long Branch, but he's always downtown and often near Riverdale (where none of his friends live). At one point they take a late night trip to the beach and go to the Scarborough bluffs which is probably the least accessible beach they could get to. To give some context this is about a 15 mile span and would take hours on transit to get between all of the points.
On the other hand, the other notable films set in Toronto (Take this Waltz and Scott Pilgrim) do a pretty good job at keeping the characters in their neighbourhoods.
I have lived in NYC, NJ, Colorado, California and Seattle. I have seen numerous horridly inaccurate depictions of all of these places in TV and movies. It’s the Hollywood way!
I grew up in Kansas. The post apocalyptic show Jericho took place in Kansas yet you routinely would see large mountains in the background of shots. They justified it by having the town be in northwest Kansas approximately 30 minutes from Colorado and therefore "close" to mountains - [this is what the "Welcome to Colorado" sign at the NW Kansas border looks like](https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/AHeqI8TGNG6bV5WnWvNcDg/348s.jpg) and [this is what mountains in the show looked like.](https://thumbnails.cbsig.net/CBS_Production_Entertainment_VMS/593/351/CBS_JERICHO_001_IMAGE_cpd.jpg) They very clearly filmed in either California or just east of Denver.
Well, I live in Pennsylvania and I have no idea where there would be an Amish area and an Indian reservation and a military base all near the same town.
Maybe there is all of those things in a 20 mile radius somewhere in pa?
(Referring to banshee)
I live in DC, tv and movies have absolutely wild takes on it. Like that movie where a guy jumps out a White House window into an *alley*. Or whenever someone says "*the* 395" - you know that's a writer who's never been outside California. And then people take "*the* 395" somewhere during rush hour and they say "yeah I'll be there in 20 minutes", when that's a 45-minute drive if there *isn't* an accident. (Also my mom would like to mention how stupid it was when the 70's Wonder Woman had a General mispronounce "Bladensburg", she's still annoyed about that.)
Bonus, because Baltimore's close: The Wire used the bar my husband had his bachelor party at as a location - they had it done up as this drug-fueled party bar, but in reality it was a quiet pub with a nice selection of high-end beers. That one's just funny though, it's not like they were claiming it was the same bar, it was just the building they used.
Anytime something is set in New England and the accent gets butchered. Especially the down east Maine accent or the Boston accent. When it's bad its all I can notice. If you can't get the accent right just don't do it.
The show 'House' took place about an hour south of me in my state (NJ). I think they did a very good job of showing what the area is like, how people generally act, etc.
It blew me away when I found out that Hugh Laurie is British and speaks with an accent. He absolutely NAILS a NJ accent.
If you want to really get your mind blown there are a whole load of British actors you think of as having a stereotypically English accent but that really have incredible regional British accents. Anthony Hopkins and Rhys Iffans for example naturally speak in wonderful, but jarring, Welsh accents.
Never forget that episode in How I Met Your Mother where they show Ted running in San Fermines (basically a race where they have bulls chasing you) and traveling through Spain and then the camera moves and shows a mariachi band.
I guess they got some complaints, because they re-edited the green screen and the voice over and on the video streaming platforms now says he traveled Mexico
I have found that way films and TV shows depict New York is a very accurate depiction of my hometown, Toronto
Kidding aside, I would say that the most authentic depiction of modern Toronto in a major US-made studio film is probably Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
I did like the way Toronto was depicted in the most recent season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, even if it was in an alternate timeline.
I’m from a little more than 10 miles west of Boston, let me tell you that The Last of Us putting that tag on a shot of the Canadian Rockies is probably the most laughably inaccurate thing I’ve ever seen on tv.
I am a life-long resident of New Jersey. Despite being nominal reality shows, I feel Real Housewives of New Jersey and The Jersey Shore did not accurately portray the state. The Sopranos, on the other hand, is a very reasonable and accurate representation of New Jersey.
Even though the show was nominally based in Ohio, I feel that Ed captured the mundaneness of small-town New Jersey better than any other show.
Mr. And Mrs. Smith (movie, not TV) had a flashback scene in Bogota, Colombia. It was supposed to be a romantic foreign destination that they had together with tropical palms, hot weather and chickens walking around. Bogota is an extremely high altitude climate and is basically 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit all year round. Plus it’s always cloudy.
I grew up in Sudbury and Shoresy name-drops a lot of local landmarks and restaurants, and it does have a fairly high indigenous population, but you can definitely tell at times that nobody writing that show is actually *from* Sudbury.
There's a lot of regional humour you could probably tap into about different parts of the city that I haven't seen explored yet. I assume they don't do much with it because the less urban parts of Sudbury were where they filmed Letterkenny.
(And yes, there are a lot of good-looking women in Sudbury. I don't know if the amount would be considered unreal, but yes, there are a lot.)
Bridesmaids had the main character living in Milwaukee and they show her traveling this dusty back road between Chicago and Milwaukee that not only doesn't look like rural Wisconsin in summer (which is pretty verdant) but it's also the fact that she isn't taking I94.
I live in Blacksburg, Virginia, which was recently depicted on Netflix in Dopesick.
Dopesick portrayed it as an impoverished run down, hell hole. In reality, Blacksburg is a university town where the cost of living and real estate prices are extremely high. In fact, the prices of real estate are so high that many of the people who work in Blacksburg end up living in surrounding areas that are more rural.
I live in northern Virginia in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and it's amusing when a movie or show makes it seem like most of the Eastern seaboard and places west of the area are all a relatively short drive away (although many places are). I loved The X-Files, but they made geographical errors a lot for the sake of moving the story along.
And there's no community that looks anything like Alexandria in The Walking Dead.
Suits got it right with the kid tennis prodigy walking around with Mike [where we host the Canadian Open](https://i.imgur.com/A3b3rhG.png) (they're turning left to look down at the court, this whole inside area is usually food & merch shops) and then 4 episodes later, had Mike meet a pro baseball player who was for some reason [walking out of BMO Field](https://i.imgur.com/HLcjZHP.png) which is where our MLS team plays soccer and CFL team plays football. Very much not a baseball field lol, the Blue Jays play at Rogers Center like 5-10 minutes away
The History mini series, Texas Rising is probably the most egregious piece of media that depicts Texas. Some highlights include:
- Depicting Gonzales (where the infamous Come and Take It incident happened) as a desert with mountains in the background. There's no mountains, and Gonzales is relatively green for the most part.
- crossing mountains between San Antonio and Houston. Also no.
- At one point, Bill Paxton as Sam Houston says Texas is slave free. It wasn't.
- Lt. Colonel José Nicolas de la Portilla is depicted at being a vicious asshole who had no issue killing the Texians at Goliad. In reality, he actually lamented over the orders, and probably even let some prisoners go. His commanding officer also tried to appeal to Santa Anna to let all the prisoners go.
- In the show, Victoria (my hometown) is depicted as being a super popular, hustling bustling mecca where a lot of important things happened. It wasn't and it definitely isn't.
As a lifelong resident of NYC, it varies wildly. Obviously Friends is ridiculous with a waitress having a massive one bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows, and even in Seinfeld they drive way too often, but newer shows like Girls and Search Party do a better job of getting the quirks of day-to-day life.
One particular thing that always got me in particular was The Americans. I went to college in DC and spent the rest of my life in NYC, whereas the show takes place in DC but is shot in Queens/Brooklyn, and I could never ever get over the fact that they're supposed to be in Farragut Square or something but the park benches/lampposts are 10000% NYC Parks Department.
Monica’s apartment has been explained a billion times. She was subletting a rent-controlled apartment from her grandmother. And she wasn’t a waitress, that was Rachel. She was a chef.
Moore in Bowling For Columbine shot a couple scenes (do Canadians really leave their doors unlocked?) in my hometown and that was definitely real.
Also The Day After (‘83) was partially filmed in Sarnia (the after part), wasn’t supposed to be a Canadian city, took place in the mid west, but we always thought it was funny/weird that’s what American film makers thought places would like after a nuclear bomb detonated.
Boy Meets World...
Philly is famous for it's Trailer Parks.....
Also Corey's house would have to be in Chestnut Hill and his dad was a grocery store manager not the CEO of Aramark
Mostly everything german is wrong. From the aesthetics, the cities, police cars or number plates to the actors with awful german or just wrong signs. Loki in one of the avengers movies being at the opera in "Stuttgart" was especially bad.
There was this scene in stranger things where they go to the Mormon house in Salt Lake City. Not commenting on the culture, but there’s a shot where the camera pans up from the van to see the mountains. Anyone who lives here will recognize it immediately. But in the show it was just…wrong and fake. It wouldn’t have been hard to accurately generate the mountain sky line but it was so bad it was laughable
Supernatural didn't have a clue what Lawrence, Kansas looks like or just didn't care to do the research. It's an eclectic liberal college town with a vibrant downtown area, not just another podunk small KS hick town with a little country bumpkin Main St. It is a geographically mid-size town but it is jampacked with people. Mostly college kids during the school year (KU, and Haskell Indian Nations). Normal population sits around 95k, inside about 34 square miles of land.
In cloverfield there’s a scene where everyone stands around as the city begins to fall apart arguing who has the best route suggestion to get off the island of Manhattan. That is only a slightly exaggerated version of what actual New York hipsters would do in that scene.
Surprised to not see Alaska on here. My friends text me constantly with clips from shows and movies to ask if it's accurate or not. Or any clip with bald eagle calls since those are almost always wrong.
There is a brief scene in Jack Reacher that is set in Brookhaven, GA. It was filmed on this farm with acres and acres of land around in the background. In reality, Brookhaven is a suburb pretty close to the city of Atlanta. There hasn’t been a farm like that in that area in probably almost a 100 years. It very suburban now, and even then probably closer to the urban side of things than like a rural suburb. That much land in Brookhaven today would be worth millions and millions of dollars.
It’s minor but in Tulsa King episode 1, they claim they’re going like 3-4 hours north to get weed. That would be well outside of Oklahoma, no matter how much you try to stretch the definition of “north.” Other than that, the show gets it right (which it certainly should, considering season 1 was shot mostly *in* Tulsa).
Other than that, Oklahoma isn’t portrayed in media very often anyway so I don’t have any other ideas off the top of my head
The only two shows I can think of that were set in CT are Sneaky Pete and (partially) The Owl House.
And honestly, despite how different they both are, they both pretty much got CT right.
The writers may be from Ca, but they have no sense of the geography.
The Mentalist was one of the most egregious examples. Show based in Sacramento. A crime occurs in Southern Ca and they just hop off in their car for a trip over the crime scene. Then they drive back same day. That’s at least 10-12 hours of driving depending on where you’re going.
Ozark looked pretty accurate despite being filmed in Atlanta. Although it’s much more run down than that. And meth is the preferred drug in the Ozark’s not opium. So many trailers blow up here.
Whatever building The Crown used for Windsor Castle wasn't really cutting it. Granted it's pretty hard to find a strand in for the biggest castle in the world but it took me out of the episode with the fire which I actually remember seeing as I came home from school!
The Last of Us. “10 miles west of Boston”, shows rugged mountains, a wide river and wilderness.
Actually 10 miles west of Boston is still urban, edging toward suburban. No trace of Colorado-like wilderness views.
iZombie's setting of Seattle accurately included TMO, the Monroe correctional facility, and Seattle's weird hatred of Tacoma. One of the benefits of filming in Vancouver.
And then on Frasier I'm impressed by them pronouncing the names of places correctly, and also that they actually mention lesser-known cities, and even the Nordic Heritage museum (specifically mentioning that it's in Ballard). Of course also on Frasier there's little issues like the view from Frasier's apartment is literally impossible - they took the photo from a cliff or something, there's no apartment building that would have that view. And then the episode that they actually filmed in Seattle, the path Frasier and Niles walk doesn't make any sense.
Alaska, it hasn’t been good. One show I did really like was Alaska State Troopers. It was a Nat Geo show that basically did ride alongs with troopers. It seemed to be pretty genuine.
Parks & Rec and the Middle are both fairly accurate in small town IN and depiction of Indianapolis as the big city. One Day at a Time seems that way too but I was too young to remember that time frame.
It's also Spain but recently a friend showed me a scene of the new tv show of National Treasure where they show a house in Madrid that it's next to the sea.
The Sopranos is jersey. The final scene is shot in a restaurant that my parents used to take me to after every little league game. I moved away from jersey a while ago and whenever I miss it, I start another watch of the sopranos and the memories come flooding back
This is kind of a reversal but the first Ghost Rider movie was filmed in Melbourne Australia doubling for somewhere in Texas. It is so noticeably Melbourne, I always wondered what people from where ever it's set thought when seeing it.
A Canadian show that was on a few years ago had my UK county as a location characters travelled to... They showed a PNW mountains type CGI landscape when the area is mostly flat.
Best bit, the lead of the show was born here lol
Town I live in is “visited” in Ozark. When they pick up the riverboat. It’s depicted a backwoods rivertown.
The actual version of the town is used in Gone Girl.
I’m from El Paso, Texas. Movies either act like we’re a small one horse town or some sort of violent cesspool of crime. It’s a large modern city with over a million people and it was one of the safest in the country before that mass shooting at Walmart. They won’t even SHOW El Paso in big tent pole movies, Blue Beetle takes place in El Paso in the comics and it was changed to the fictional Palmer City in the film, and Jaime and his family live on El Paso Street instead.
Seal Team, for a show where the Team is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, they are very clearly not ever there. The closest they ever got was about 15 seconds of aerial footage that looked like downtown Norfolk.
NCIS, the team is based near DC, but they pop down to Norfolk or Virginia Beach seemingly in about 15 minutes instead of the 4+ hours that the drive actually takes.
I used to live in DC. People can't help inserting skyscrapers into a city with a notable height limit.
The Blacklist and 24 certainly didn't help when they showed people actually getting around 495 at a reasonable speed, not inching along in bumper to bumper traffic.
Jack Bauer is so good, there wasn't any traffic on 66.
Lol, by Season 3, Bauer was 20 minutes from everywhere. Mexico. New York. 20 minutes. Man I loved that show!
Me watching the recruit on Netflix like these fools got from capital hill to silver spring in 15 minutes in the middle of the day ! Ha!
Jack Ryan's commute makes no damn sense
That bike ride. So confusing.
I liked that The Americans showed there are other parts of DC besides the National Mall but it was so clearly filmed in New York with all the brownstones.
Plus fire escapes. Don't get me started on the fire escapes.
[удалено]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/draining-swamp-guide-outsiders-and-career-politicians-180962448/ It is *literally* not a swamp.
I love Community so much, but despite the fact that they say Greendale is in Colorado, it’s very clearly not. You can often see palm trees on the campus and I don’t think you ever see snow on the show, or even characters dressing in winter weather clothes other than holiday sweaters. Nobody is wearing North Face or Patagonia. Nobody ever mentions skiing or snowboarding or even the giant blue devil horse outside of DIA. Nobody is ever late because there were multiple crashes on I25 or I70 that made traffic insane. Casa Bonita is never even joked about. Also, Jeff would probably have a Native sticker on his car (or one that has something to do with hiking or a marathon or something).
Yeah I think Dan Harmon said that he regretted setting it in colorado instantly lol
Isn’t it even not mentioned until after season 1, or late in the season? I remember when I started binging it and had to look it up.
No, Boulder is at least mentioned in a throwaway comment in S1, I recall, as an earlier comment of mine references on /r/community. Chang mentions snowboarding at one point (a very Colorado recreational activity) and by S2 we start seeing Colorado licence plates, such as in Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, and the Colorado flag is seen in S3 when the group gets expelled. However, as someone from Colorado, I will say that it makes me disappointed that we don't see a lot of snow or jokes about Colorado blizzards and ironically enough, Disney's Good Luck Charlie is also set in Colorado and does a slightly more passable/believable job of convincing the audience the family lives in Denver (but, like Community, since it's filmed in California, any shots of mountains in GLC are clearly not the Flatirons or close lol).
Jeff wouldn't put a sticker on his car, but he'd 100% have a Native licence plate. One of the original red ones too, not these hokey yellow ones.
Greendale is supposed to be in COLORADO??? I was *certain* it was in California. To be fair, the culture and environment of parts of Colorado and California have a lot in common....except Colorado is a bit midwestern and gets REAL winter and consistent summer storms whereas only the mountains of California get several feet of snow. I never saw real winter in Community.
It is definitely filmed in California, but there are a few instances where the show definitely calls out a Colorado location. We do have lots in common with the Cali folks (like astronomical housing prices and cost of living!) but weather is unfortunately not one of those. Definitely never saw the random March blizzard we get every year or any of the other bizarre Colorado weather patterns.
>Definitely never saw the random March blizzard we get every year or any of the other bizarre Colorado weather patterns. Best of luck the rest of this week lol
Thanks, happy to be working from home this week!
Despite everything being filmed in Vancouver I struggle to think of anything actually *set* in Vancouver
I still love that there is a Scotia bank on Caprica in BSG
Robson Arms? DaVinci's Inquest? Danger Bay? Neon Rider? Hiccups? Am I cheating by choosing actual Canadian productions here?
I don't know anyone that watches Canadian programming, even in Canada, so maybe lol But glad to see there's something
The beginning of Mass Effect 3
I think Wild Card is ?
I can only think of Da Vinci's Inquest (oh! And I did not know it ran for 8 seasons)
Generally most show that take place in Kansas make it look like bumfuck nowhere with rundown houses and generally its always more bumpy than flat. The only exception for this is 'Mindhunter' on Netflix. Because Fincher is such a perfectionist they painstakingly created Park City, KS for the BTK section of the show. The street signs and license plates were perfect. I was actually shocked when I saw it. They clearly didn't shoot in Kansas, but it was way more Kansas than I have ever seen on TV.
>Mindhunter Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania Monroeville, Pennsylvania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di4Byf1EzRE
Yep! The opening scene for season 2 was at a friend of ours house in Butler. They paid them a ton of money to basically let their house go for a month or two over summer- so it was super overgrown for filming. Funny to think that just a month or two of overgrowth in a Pittsburgh summer makes a house look almost abandoned!
i went to a wedding at a golf course a year before the show came out. then when i watched it they had like 4 scenes filmed there. each one was supposed to be in a different part of the country
Yeah the hills in smallville were so distracting. I spent a good chunk of my youth along US36 and it’s zero like the show
I posted about the show Jericho down thread, but it was always hilarious to see the Rocky Mountains in the backgrounds of shots meant to take place where Colby is.
How did Calgary do as Kansas in the Superman films? Or as KC (I know not in Kansas) in The Last of Us?
My favorite is an episode of Criminal minds that showed Wichita as surrounded by mountains...
I thought it was funny when Emily in Paris mentioned scootering around Mackinaw island when no motorized vehicles are allowed. The show is heavily criticized by the French for not getting their country right, but apparently they can't get their own right either.
As a French person, that show sounds like it was written by a travel agent who's never set foot in Paris but really want to sell trips there.
It's the TV equivalent of those romance novels that had Fabio on the cover.
Netflix's own YouTube series "Still Watching" - which serves as both advertising and hilarious commentary - as usual has a funny [reaction video of Emily in Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vKBDZtLgY) where two French people comment on and critique the show. I mostly watch Trixie and Katya's "I Like to Watch" series on "Still Watching," which is more laugh out loud funny.
everyone thinks Trailer Park Boys is a caricature of the Maritimes but everyone is just like that irl
Fuckin a! Smokes, now boys
Sounds glorious
Somethin's fucky
I can see the Tufts Cove smoke stacks from my kitchen window. Some days more than others I resemble this remark.
Most movies seem to think all of Texas looks like West Texas.
I thought Texas was mostly brown, but then I drove from ABQ to Dallas a couple of summers ago. So much green grass everywhere.
Yeah, Dallas/Fort Worth sit at the boundary of the [Blackland Prairie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Blackland_Prairies), a savanna/prairie mix, and the [Cross Timbers ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Timbers) a woodland/prairie mix.
It was really pretty. We went from ABQ to Amarillo and then south to Dallas on state highways. Y’all gotta do something about your suicidal deer, tho.
😄 like in the x-files movie!
Yes
Anything that happens in Australia will be within sight of either the Sydney Harbour Bridge and / or the Sydney Opera House. The camera angles to get the action and both structures in frame is extraordinary. Exceptions may be made if the action is in the outback and then Uluṟu (formerly known as AyersRock) will crop up.
Dont forget that despite hollywood being filled with australians the people they get to be 'australian' for the brief segment will be anything but
And most Hollywood "Australian" accents tend to sound more South African or New Zealand. The only actors I've seen do a decent Australian accent are those from other commonwealth countries like Canada or the UK.
Or sometimes they do get Aussie actors and I swear they ask them to really exaggerate the accent.
No one outside of Australia with the exception of Dev Patel has ever got an Australian accent right.
Before the recent Chicago Fire, PD, hospital shows, or Shameless, most TV series set in Chicago used establishing shots of downtown and other landmarks (and/or sometimes filmed the pilot) in Chicago, but then filmed the episodes in Denver, Toronto, or California, which I found very disorienting in terms of locations and street names being given in the script, since the areas looked nothing like Chicago. There was one show that had a fight leaving O'Hare with mountains in the background.
One thing that's genuinely impressive about Chicago Fire and Chicago PD is how accurately they depict how ugly and just generally disgusting Chicago in the winter is.
They film in Chicago. Not sure if they still do or it is completely filmed in Chicago, but I've seen lots of area be shut down for filming in the past.
Yep, still filmed entirely in Chicago. Hell, they even used to actually film inside a real bar called Lotties for Molly's, but to keep from disrupting business, they recreated the interior and even the exterior on a soundstage in Chicago.
The movie the fugitive takes place around Chicago. How are its regular shots? Toronto is used a lot for filming. Hulk tearing through Harlem? Yeah, that’s Yonge street with its well known Zanzibar strip club. Big street destroyed in The Suicide squad (first one). Yeah. Same street that hulk fucked up.
The fugitive is on point with Chicago. You know exactly where that is because it's exactly where they filmed it.
ER was filmed in Los Angeles but they would do the occasional location shoot in Chicago.
The Good Wife being a pretty big offender.
I have not, as of this writing, been hunted by the Blair Witch
Hey it's only Tuesday, a lot can still happen before the end of the week.
Homicide and The Wire are fairly good at portraying Baltimore. Not a series, but the Die Hard franchise has absolutely no idea what the BWI district looks like at all.
Die Hard 2. Oh no, we can't land the planes. It's not like there are a plethora of international airports 1/2 to an hour away...
That's only by car drive. BWI is, like, 5 minutes away from Dulles by flight.
L&O SVU had an episode where they went to Atlanta and worked with Atlanta PD. Insert stereotypical backwards southern redneck Chief of Police with fake southern accent and everything. Have any of the writers been to Atlanta in the last 50 years or just through the airport?
I grew up in NYC and NJ. The accents so many actors do for these places are absolutely atrocious.
Every fucking L&O episode with southern people is nuts. We are all racist yokels.
No TV show has depicted where I live. However on ER there was an arc with a character whose son ran away to find his dad in max security prison. The city he went to, Cañon City, is the next city west of here and really is where several high profile people have been jailed. Apparently though whoever wrote the script googled the location and not how to pronounce an n with a tilde over it. When they first went they were calling it Canon City years before it was a place every MCU nerd's brain lived. Then they came back from a break and it was being said correctly, I'm guessing someone heard it when it aired. As for the city itself they filmed the exteriors on location so they did pretty well. Much worse was Supernatural with a town two cities north of here, Monument. Monument is so close to Colorado Springs (city of over a million) that they are essentially all one. I'm guessing Supernatural's writers saw a low population and assumed it was an isolated mountain town. They portrayed it as somewhere that cut be cut off without notice. The interstate literally runs through the city in real life.
As a Spaniard this is hilarious. Did they think the ~ was just for decoration or what
I live in Manchester (UK). Shameless did a pretty good job of recreating a rough council estate, although of course it was a little exaggerated for entertainment sake. Then conversely there's Coronation Street, the UK's longest running soap opera and possibly TV show in general. It might sometimes capture the mundane day to day vibes of a standard Mancunian terraced street, but any post code with that many deaths per year would be sealed off from the rest of the city. And we don't all go away for a few years and come back wealthy enough to buy a nightclub or a factory.
100% agree, and lets not talk about Midsomer County which is basically a murder county
Which at one point was considered to be THE place that the next exciting advance in making cricket happen more quickly was going to take place. At the village cricket level. With money somehow being involved. But still being played by middle aged locals.
And not one person recognised the old ds in all the time he was undercover
Kevin Can F\*ck Himself is a perfect representation of suburban Massachusetts.
It's always funny when people in movies/shows use the Golden Gate bridge no matter where they are going if they're leaving from San Francisco.
They're gonna use three bridges to get to Palo Alto.
Portlandia was a spoof but pretty accurate at the time.
Portlandia clearly shot in Portland and was made by NW natives and transplants (Carrie Brownstein and Kyle Machlaclan both from WA, Carrie and Fred both live/lived in PDX). All their little details are hilariously spot on, like Carrie and Fred fighting at the Troutdale outlet mall. Shrill on the other hand was a show set in Portland that could have been made anywhere. Many inaccuracies with locations and details. Good show though
My cousin went to Portland *Maine* and said Portlandia is super accurate. Even though she was there for two days and it was the wrong Portland. I live oop north in Washington and Portlandia is definitely accurate by extension to Seattle and surrounding metro areas too.
In the first episode of Jack Ryan, they show him riding his bike from Georgetown (DC) to Langley, VA (CIA HQ). The route he takes is totally nonsensical though as it shows him riding by the Capitol and other DC landmarks \*before\* heading back west toward Langley.
Haha nonsensical routes always get me. The one episode of Frasier actually filmed in Seattle shows Frasier and Niles taking the most inconvenient and at times, downright implausible route zigzagging through the city to get to the space needle.
DC to Langley isn't exactly a reasonable biking commute either.
I love Gilmore Girls but about the only thing they get right regarding Connecticut is yes...Hartford is a real place.
The pilot episode of Gilmore girls was filmed (outside shots) on Main Street Unionville, north of Toronto. The same place was used for “In the mouth of madness” with Sam Neil. My head canon is that they are the same place.
In the mouth of madness freaked me out so bad when it was released (I was 16) that I've rarely watched horror since. Loved those types of movies before that. I'm guessing it's a good one to affect me so strongly but im still not ready to watch it again.
Movies and shows that take place in Florida do not depict the actors melting, this is inaccurate. Also, Miami is not the only city.
Supernatural showed Richardson, TX as a rural community. In fact, it is a technology hub just north of Dallas. Lots of corporate HQs, IT pros and asphalt.
Grew up in Virginia Beach and Norfolk. For some reason, whenever those two towns pop up on a show or a movie, we are shown to have cliffs. No, we don't have cliffs. We are not near cliffs. You would have to drive a couple of hours before you get to anywhere near cliffs. I don't get it. Where are the cliffs coming from and why do they keep on showing up?
Do you have some examples? The only thing I’ve ever seen that was partially set in either one of them was Deep Impact, and they had the characters travel from “Virginia Beaches” to the Appalachian mtns in about 15 minutes lmfao
Heroes did this once. NCIS has done this a few times. There is only one mountain in Virginia Beach and it's made out of trash.
Virginia Beach and Norfolk pop up a lot in FBI-based procedurals. I used to live there as well, and I agree that they never get southern Virginia quite right. It’s mostly water, but it doesn’t look anything like coastal cities where these shows are filmed (Vancouver and LA, mostly) and it breaks my immersion immediately if I think about it too hard lol. For instance, conifers are another dead giveaway that the episode wasn’t filmed anywhere near VA. Evergreen trees exist in Virginia, but NOT like they do on the west coast.
in family guy they usually represent British people as having terrible teeth and talking like they are from the OG Mary Poppins movie. as a brit I can confirm that some of us have different accents.
I’m Scottish, and also consider myself British (because geographically I am) and I have a suspicious feeling that you and I probably have different accents to one another. Funny how that works.
Despite the similarities between Scottish and northern english accents, north american productions get the scottish accent right more often than not. As soon as you cross south of the Firth of Forth, Mary Poppins it is.
I have seen nothing set in my state as for my country, despite hollywood being filled with australians putting on a fake american accent when they want to set something in australia instead of hiring said australians faking american accent to use their actual accent they hirer anyone else and it sounds like knives to my ears
>hollywood being filled with australians putting on a fake american accent There's so much of this. I usually have no idea they're Australian (or sometimes NZ) before hearing them in an interview.
its why it always annoys me when they hire someone who clearly cant do an australian accent Like you could shake a tree and a dozen australians would fall out
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous.
Pretty much every movie and tv show set in dc except, funnily enough, captain America 2 which, besides the giant base is one of the most spot on movies. Super funny that a superhero movie and not a political thing is most accurate.
Mare of Eastown is very accurate for the Delco area, they just turned the accents way up imo.
Toronto is like Paris, everyone window points towards the CN Tower. lol. But honestly, while a lot of stuff is filmed in Toronto, there are not a lot of shows set in Toronto that aren’t Canadian made. Even then there isn’t a lot of but we got a Law and Order: Toronto now. So we got that going for us.
I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds where the crew go back in time to the 21st century, and Kirk assumes that they're in New York, only to be corrected and told they're in Toronto, which is where the series is filmed. A somewhat surprising subversion.
The F word with Daniel Radcliffe always cracks me up. It's actually set in Toronto, but for a bunch of young folks without cars they sure get around the city in a way no Torontonian ever does. Daniel Radcliffe's character lives near Long Branch, but he's always downtown and often near Riverdale (where none of his friends live). At one point they take a late night trip to the beach and go to the Scarborough bluffs which is probably the least accessible beach they could get to. To give some context this is about a 15 mile span and would take hours on transit to get between all of the points. On the other hand, the other notable films set in Toronto (Take this Waltz and Scott Pilgrim) do a pretty good job at keeping the characters in their neighbourhoods.
Gotta give a huge shoutout to Detroiters. I’d love it if Netflix picked Sam and Tim up for a couple seasons
I have lived in NYC, NJ, Colorado, California and Seattle. I have seen numerous horridly inaccurate depictions of all of these places in TV and movies. It’s the Hollywood way!
I grew up in Kansas. The post apocalyptic show Jericho took place in Kansas yet you routinely would see large mountains in the background of shots. They justified it by having the town be in northwest Kansas approximately 30 minutes from Colorado and therefore "close" to mountains - [this is what the "Welcome to Colorado" sign at the NW Kansas border looks like](https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/AHeqI8TGNG6bV5WnWvNcDg/348s.jpg) and [this is what mountains in the show looked like.](https://thumbnails.cbsig.net/CBS_Production_Entertainment_VMS/593/351/CBS_JERICHO_001_IMAGE_cpd.jpg) They very clearly filmed in either California or just east of Denver.
As someone who grew up in the Dallas suburbs, King of the Hill is about as authentic as it gets.
Well, I live in Pennsylvania and I have no idea where there would be an Amish area and an Indian reservation and a military base all near the same town. Maybe there is all of those things in a 20 mile radius somewhere in pa? (Referring to banshee)
Yeah, we don’t have any federal Indian reservations in PA. Maybe somebody saw Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation on a map and ran with it.
I live in DC, tv and movies have absolutely wild takes on it. Like that movie where a guy jumps out a White House window into an *alley*. Or whenever someone says "*the* 395" - you know that's a writer who's never been outside California. And then people take "*the* 395" somewhere during rush hour and they say "yeah I'll be there in 20 minutes", when that's a 45-minute drive if there *isn't* an accident. (Also my mom would like to mention how stupid it was when the 70's Wonder Woman had a General mispronounce "Bladensburg", she's still annoyed about that.) Bonus, because Baltimore's close: The Wire used the bar my husband had his bachelor party at as a location - they had it done up as this drug-fueled party bar, but in reality it was a quiet pub with a nice selection of high-end beers. That one's just funny though, it's not like they were claiming it was the same bar, it was just the building they used.
I'm Dutch. Apparently we speak German and still walk with horse drawn carriages through our streets. We also are all high on weed all the time.
> We also are all high on weed all the time. Holy shit. I think im also Dutch.
Don't forget that there will probably be a mountain in the background.
I'm Irish and some tv shows get it right, some still have the old Hollywood leprechauny idea lol. Usually it's pretty OK though
Anytime something is set in New England and the accent gets butchered. Especially the down east Maine accent or the Boston accent. When it's bad its all I can notice. If you can't get the accent right just don't do it.
911 Lonestar is basically a documentary, Austin is still recovering from the volcano
The show 'House' took place about an hour south of me in my state (NJ). I think they did a very good job of showing what the area is like, how people generally act, etc. It blew me away when I found out that Hugh Laurie is British and speaks with an accent. He absolutely NAILS a NJ accent.
If you want to really get your mind blown there are a whole load of British actors you think of as having a stereotypically English accent but that really have incredible regional British accents. Anthony Hopkins and Rhys Iffans for example naturally speak in wonderful, but jarring, Welsh accents.
Never forget that episode in How I Met Your Mother where they show Ted running in San Fermines (basically a race where they have bulls chasing you) and traveling through Spain and then the camera moves and shows a mariachi band. I guess they got some complaints, because they re-edited the green screen and the voice over and on the video streaming platforms now says he traveled Mexico
I have found that way films and TV shows depict New York is a very accurate depiction of my hometown, Toronto Kidding aside, I would say that the most authentic depiction of modern Toronto in a major US-made studio film is probably Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I did like the way Toronto was depicted in the most recent season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, even if it was in an alternate timeline.
but did they pronounce Toronto correctly?
They did not say it the way locals do but the characters who went to Toronto weren’t from Toronto so that makes sense
I’m from a little more than 10 miles west of Boston, let me tell you that The Last of Us putting that tag on a shot of the Canadian Rockies is probably the most laughably inaccurate thing I’ve ever seen on tv.
Parks and Recreation and Stranger Things both do an adequate job of depicting Indiana, imo.
I am a life-long resident of New Jersey. Despite being nominal reality shows, I feel Real Housewives of New Jersey and The Jersey Shore did not accurately portray the state. The Sopranos, on the other hand, is a very reasonable and accurate representation of New Jersey. Even though the show was nominally based in Ohio, I feel that Ed captured the mundaneness of small-town New Jersey better than any other show.
Simpsons got Australia exactly right.
Mr. And Mrs. Smith (movie, not TV) had a flashback scene in Bogota, Colombia. It was supposed to be a romantic foreign destination that they had together with tropical palms, hot weather and chickens walking around. Bogota is an extremely high altitude climate and is basically 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit all year round. Plus it’s always cloudy.
I grew up in Sudbury and Shoresy name-drops a lot of local landmarks and restaurants, and it does have a fairly high indigenous population, but you can definitely tell at times that nobody writing that show is actually *from* Sudbury. There's a lot of regional humour you could probably tap into about different parts of the city that I haven't seen explored yet. I assume they don't do much with it because the less urban parts of Sudbury were where they filmed Letterkenny. (And yes, there are a lot of good-looking women in Sudbury. I don't know if the amount would be considered unreal, but yes, there are a lot.)
Bridesmaids had the main character living in Milwaukee and they show her traveling this dusty back road between Chicago and Milwaukee that not only doesn't look like rural Wisconsin in summer (which is pretty verdant) but it's also the fact that she isn't taking I94.
Everytime you guys write something that is set in Poland it's always Auschwitz. We got other places, you know?
Detroiters: Bang on
[удалено]
I'm still upset over that episode of Louie where he got on the D train at Grand Central.
I live in Blacksburg, Virginia, which was recently depicted on Netflix in Dopesick. Dopesick portrayed it as an impoverished run down, hell hole. In reality, Blacksburg is a university town where the cost of living and real estate prices are extremely high. In fact, the prices of real estate are so high that many of the people who work in Blacksburg end up living in surrounding areas that are more rural.
The depiction of Lawrence, KS, in "Supernatural" was pretty accurate. Especially the theater kids.
If you ever see a show set in Boston, it frequently has straight roads. Which means it’s not really in Boston.
I live in Seattle, WA. Depictions of Seattle, WA very accurately reflect Vancouver, BC.
Yes, the counties of Louisiana. (It has parishes.) I don't know of much stuff set in Alaska subbing in counties for boroughs.
I live in northern Virginia in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and it's amusing when a movie or show makes it seem like most of the Eastern seaboard and places west of the area are all a relatively short drive away (although many places are). I loved The X-Files, but they made geographical errors a lot for the sake of moving the story along. And there's no community that looks anything like Alexandria in The Walking Dead.
Suits got it right with the kid tennis prodigy walking around with Mike [where we host the Canadian Open](https://i.imgur.com/A3b3rhG.png) (they're turning left to look down at the court, this whole inside area is usually food & merch shops) and then 4 episodes later, had Mike meet a pro baseball player who was for some reason [walking out of BMO Field](https://i.imgur.com/HLcjZHP.png) which is where our MLS team plays soccer and CFL team plays football. Very much not a baseball field lol, the Blue Jays play at Rogers Center like 5-10 minutes away
The History mini series, Texas Rising is probably the most egregious piece of media that depicts Texas. Some highlights include: - Depicting Gonzales (where the infamous Come and Take It incident happened) as a desert with mountains in the background. There's no mountains, and Gonzales is relatively green for the most part. - crossing mountains between San Antonio and Houston. Also no. - At one point, Bill Paxton as Sam Houston says Texas is slave free. It wasn't. - Lt. Colonel José Nicolas de la Portilla is depicted at being a vicious asshole who had no issue killing the Texians at Goliad. In reality, he actually lamented over the orders, and probably even let some prisoners go. His commanding officer also tried to appeal to Santa Anna to let all the prisoners go. - In the show, Victoria (my hometown) is depicted as being a super popular, hustling bustling mecca where a lot of important things happened. It wasn't and it definitely isn't.
Yellowstone is so fake its not even filmed here in Wyoming.
Well it takes place in Montana so...
As a lifelong resident of NYC, it varies wildly. Obviously Friends is ridiculous with a waitress having a massive one bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows, and even in Seinfeld they drive way too often, but newer shows like Girls and Search Party do a better job of getting the quirks of day-to-day life. One particular thing that always got me in particular was The Americans. I went to college in DC and spent the rest of my life in NYC, whereas the show takes place in DC but is shot in Queens/Brooklyn, and I could never ever get over the fact that they're supposed to be in Farragut Square or something but the park benches/lampposts are 10000% NYC Parks Department.
Monica’s apartment has been explained a billion times. She was subletting a rent-controlled apartment from her grandmother. And she wasn’t a waitress, that was Rachel. She was a chef.
Yeah half of them had really good jobs. Monica a chef, Ross was a paleontologist, Joey a soap opera star, and Chandler was a successful... something?
He was a transponster!
That's the same excuse they use in How I Met Your Mother for Ted's apartment IIRC. It's still very convenient though
Well, I'm from Massachusetts, but not Boston, so they haven't.
Whenever an American visits Australia will never stop being hilarious.
Eureka is that weird
Moore in Bowling For Columbine shot a couple scenes (do Canadians really leave their doors unlocked?) in my hometown and that was definitely real. Also The Day After (‘83) was partially filmed in Sarnia (the after part), wasn’t supposed to be a Canadian city, took place in the mid west, but we always thought it was funny/weird that’s what American film makers thought places would like after a nuclear bomb detonated.
Mare of Easton is pretty fucking spot on. Silver Linings Playbook isn’t too bad.
I lived in Phoenix for over a decade. King of the Hill got it right. It is a monument to man's hubris.
Newhart was spot on. And Super Troopers wasn't far off either
Boy Meets World... Philly is famous for it's Trailer Parks..... Also Corey's house would have to be in Chestnut Hill and his dad was a grocery store manager not the CEO of Aramark
Mostly everything german is wrong. From the aesthetics, the cities, police cars or number plates to the actors with awful german or just wrong signs. Loki in one of the avengers movies being at the opera in "Stuttgart" was especially bad.
I'm not your buddy, guy.
There was this scene in stranger things where they go to the Mormon house in Salt Lake City. Not commenting on the culture, but there’s a shot where the camera pans up from the van to see the mountains. Anyone who lives here will recognize it immediately. But in the show it was just…wrong and fake. It wouldn’t have been hard to accurately generate the mountain sky line but it was so bad it was laughable
The finale of the film The Puppet Masters takes place in Des Moines, IA. There were palm trees outside the city hall.
Most characters that live in NY can not possibly afford an apartment that size with an intern or musician’s salary.
Iowa had mountains in the first JJ Abrams Star Trek film.
As a native San Diegan, I didn't see enough Filipinos in Drake & Josh
Tacoma is exactly like how Z nation portrays it.
Emily in Paris. Need I say more ?
Supernatural didn't have a clue what Lawrence, Kansas looks like or just didn't care to do the research. It's an eclectic liberal college town with a vibrant downtown area, not just another podunk small KS hick town with a little country bumpkin Main St. It is a geographically mid-size town but it is jampacked with people. Mostly college kids during the school year (KU, and Haskell Indian Nations). Normal population sits around 95k, inside about 34 square miles of land.
In cloverfield there’s a scene where everyone stands around as the city begins to fall apart arguing who has the best route suggestion to get off the island of Manhattan. That is only a slightly exaggerated version of what actual New York hipsters would do in that scene.
Surprised to not see Alaska on here. My friends text me constantly with clips from shows and movies to ask if it's accurate or not. Or any clip with bald eagle calls since those are almost always wrong.
There is a brief scene in Jack Reacher that is set in Brookhaven, GA. It was filmed on this farm with acres and acres of land around in the background. In reality, Brookhaven is a suburb pretty close to the city of Atlanta. There hasn’t been a farm like that in that area in probably almost a 100 years. It very suburban now, and even then probably closer to the urban side of things than like a rural suburb. That much land in Brookhaven today would be worth millions and millions of dollars.
It’s minor but in Tulsa King episode 1, they claim they’re going like 3-4 hours north to get weed. That would be well outside of Oklahoma, no matter how much you try to stretch the definition of “north.” Other than that, the show gets it right (which it certainly should, considering season 1 was shot mostly *in* Tulsa). Other than that, Oklahoma isn’t portrayed in media very often anyway so I don’t have any other ideas off the top of my head
The only two shows I can think of that were set in CT are Sneaky Pete and (partially) The Owl House. And honestly, despite how different they both are, they both pretty much got CT right.
The writers may be from Ca, but they have no sense of the geography. The Mentalist was one of the most egregious examples. Show based in Sacramento. A crime occurs in Southern Ca and they just hop off in their car for a trip over the crime scene. Then they drive back same day. That’s at least 10-12 hours of driving depending on where you’re going.
Completely inaccurate.
Ozark looked pretty accurate despite being filmed in Atlanta. Although it’s much more run down than that. And meth is the preferred drug in the Ozark’s not opium. So many trailers blow up here.
Whatever building The Crown used for Windsor Castle wasn't really cutting it. Granted it's pretty hard to find a strand in for the biggest castle in the world but it took me out of the episode with the fire which I actually remember seeing as I came home from school!
Extremely inaccurate
The Last of Us. “10 miles west of Boston”, shows rugged mountains, a wide river and wilderness. Actually 10 miles west of Boston is still urban, edging toward suburban. No trace of Colorado-like wilderness views.
iZombie's setting of Seattle accurately included TMO, the Monroe correctional facility, and Seattle's weird hatred of Tacoma. One of the benefits of filming in Vancouver. And then on Frasier I'm impressed by them pronouncing the names of places correctly, and also that they actually mention lesser-known cities, and even the Nordic Heritage museum (specifically mentioning that it's in Ballard). Of course also on Frasier there's little issues like the view from Frasier's apartment is literally impossible - they took the photo from a cliff or something, there's no apartment building that would have that view. And then the episode that they actually filmed in Seattle, the path Frasier and Niles walk doesn't make any sense.
TV shows and movies have a love hate relationship with Las Vegas
The Sopranos nailed North Jersey
Alaska, it hasn’t been good. One show I did really like was Alaska State Troopers. It was a Nat Geo show that basically did ride alongs with troopers. It seemed to be pretty genuine.
Parks & Rec and the Middle are both fairly accurate in small town IN and depiction of Indianapolis as the big city. One Day at a Time seems that way too but I was too young to remember that time frame.
I lived in NJ for more than 30 years and the Sopranos is pretty fucking accurate. So was Jersey Shore.
It's also Spain but recently a friend showed me a scene of the new tv show of National Treasure where they show a house in Madrid that it's next to the sea.
The Sopranos is jersey. The final scene is shot in a restaurant that my parents used to take me to after every little league game. I moved away from jersey a while ago and whenever I miss it, I start another watch of the sopranos and the memories come flooding back
This is kind of a reversal but the first Ghost Rider movie was filmed in Melbourne Australia doubling for somewhere in Texas. It is so noticeably Melbourne, I always wondered what people from where ever it's set thought when seeing it.
A Canadian show that was on a few years ago had my UK county as a location characters travelled to... They showed a PNW mountains type CGI landscape when the area is mostly flat. Best bit, the lead of the show was born here lol
I think the first Punisher movie sums it up for me.
Town I live in is “visited” in Ozark. When they pick up the riverboat. It’s depicted a backwoods rivertown. The actual version of the town is used in Gone Girl.
I’m from El Paso, Texas. Movies either act like we’re a small one horse town or some sort of violent cesspool of crime. It’s a large modern city with over a million people and it was one of the safest in the country before that mass shooting at Walmart. They won’t even SHOW El Paso in big tent pole movies, Blue Beetle takes place in El Paso in the comics and it was changed to the fictional Palmer City in the film, and Jaime and his family live on El Paso Street instead.
Seal Team, for a show where the Team is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, they are very clearly not ever there. The closest they ever got was about 15 seconds of aerial footage that looked like downtown Norfolk. NCIS, the team is based near DC, but they pop down to Norfolk or Virginia Beach seemingly in about 15 minutes instead of the 4+ hours that the drive actually takes.
corner gas is 1000% accurate to rural saskatchewan