TV shows set in cities that get city features horribly wrong

[1995hoo]

The Killing is set in Seattle and filmed in Vancouver. That's excusable given the tax incentive, but this is not:

Wow!

That makes me recall a deli that used to be around the corner from my old office. They introduced some new sandwiches and put up a sign about their new "Brooklyn" menu. Problem was, the skyline they placed at the bottom of the sign included the CN Tower and SkyDome.

[jwolfer]

The Killing is set in Seattle and filmed in Vancouver. That's excusable given the tax incentive, but this is not:

At least it's not set in Atlanta..  Seattle and Vancouver at least have similar climate and topography. I guess they figure only people familiar Seattle or Vancouver would be able to tell.

[bing101]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119664/locations?ref_=tt_dt_dt

The 1997 movie Metro with Eddie Murphy. Vallejo was used as a backup city when some scenes could not be filmed in San Francisco for safety reasons.

[roadman65]

Watch Kojack reruns and see how much more LA they get in outdoor locations then they do NY where its supposed to be set.

[JMoses24]

Mythbusters on Discovery some of their Bay Area Scenes take place in Vallejo, CA but is sometimes credited for taking place in San Francisco or Oakland.

I'm kinda a MythBusters super-fan, and I have never heard Vallejo scenes credited as "San Francisco" or "Oakland", but "Vallejo". The M5 shop is, in fact, located in San Francisco off of I-280 on Missouri Street (it has a Yelp listing).

[VTGoose]

I'm surprised that JAG and NCIS haven't shown up here for their gross violations of geography. Since they were globetrotting so much, it would probably be possible to generate a long list of problems. There were a number of scenes, though, where Harm was flying his Stearman from an airport near "home" in Washington, D.C. and the terrain seen in the background was nothing like Northern Virginia. The worst offense was late in the series' run when Harm had left JAG. He flew into "Blacksburg, Virginia" and met up with Maddie, who was running a crop-dusting service. Harm went to work for her, doing crop-dusting on the cotton crops. Minor problem -- cotton doesn't grow in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. While we do have an airport here, it looks nothing like what was shown in the program.

NCIS does a pretty good job of being somewhat true to reality with small details, like Virginia license plates that are correct in look but with a number scheme nothing like that offered by the DMV and with the paint job on State Police cars. But they give a false impression of just how close places are to the Washington Navy Yard. The gang jaunts to Norfolk like it is just across the Potomac River and goes deep into the mountains of West Virginia in no time. Apparently the writers in California don't own any maps.

Bruce in Blacksburg

[bing101]

Mythbusters on Discovery some of their Bay Area Scenes take place in Vallejo, CA but is sometimes credited for taking place in San Francisco or Oakland.

I'm kinda a MythBusters super-fan, and I have never heard Vallejo scenes credited as "San Francisco" or "Oakland", but "Vallejo". The M5 shop is, in fact, located in San Francisco off of I-280 on Missouri Street (it has a Yelp listing).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383126/locations?mode=desktop

Sorry I did not include this link of Mythbusters locations

[jwolfer]

But they give a false impression of just how close places are ...

Bruce in Blacksburg

Pretty common on TV. The show "The Glades" about a Florida detective they have them going from Ft Lauderdale to Cassadega for an interview which is around a four hour drive. Not a normal work day trip. It was at least filmed in Florida.

Another thing that bugs me on TV especially is people taking a flight somewhere where nearly everyone would drive ( or train) like New York to Philadelphia

[bwana39]

Both In The Heat of The Night and Dukes of Hazzard were filmed in Covington, GA.  One took place in a fictional town in Mississippi and the other took place in the right state (although you do not hear where Hazzard County is located  and its state's capital city is called "Capital City") as we all could figure out its in Georgia.  Many producers like to film in other places hundreds or thousands of miles away if a town could just about pass.  In the south many towns look a like, so whether MS, AL, or GA you would have the same type of business district or courthouse.

Back to Smokey And The Bandit where the setting was to be Texarkana, Texas.  The primary premise of the movie was that both Bandit Darvill (Burt Reynolds) and Cledus Snow (Jerry Reed) had to drive to Texarkana to pick up Coors Beer as it was illegal east of Texas in the 70's.   In reality the Texas county that Texarkana is located is a Dry County and does not sell alcohol!  That is why the Arkansas side of US 71 is located with many liquor stores to get business from the Texas side of the city.

I was able to guess Dukes of Hazzard was in Covington based on a route marker seen downtown, and a hunch that a reference to the Yellow River was accurate.  Kind of surprised they never did an episode about Boss Hogg trying to profit somehow from the construction of I-20.

In Smokey & The Bandit, they didn't buy the beer in Texarkana.  They stole it from a Coors warehouse.  I'd say that's still plausible, uunless "dry county" means you can't have a distribution warehouse storing beer either.

The DC was (and I think still is) indeed in Texarkana ARKANSAS. Coors Distributing Co, 700 E Broad St, Texarkana, AR 71854  At the time the zip would have still been 75502. That was before Huck got the Miller county zip codes changed to "Arkansas ones". Miller County has been wet since the 1940's.

[The Nature Boy]

This is a long-running joke in the DC area, since so many movies and shows are set here and so few get it right.  As one egregious example, Remember the Titans was filmed mostly in Georgia because real Alexandria and Hollywood Alexandria are so different.

I know I'm replying to a 10 year old post but...

I have a hard time believing Alexandria was anything remotely close to a sleepy Southern town in the early 1970s. If you watched that movie, your impression of Alexandria would be WAY different than its reality.

[Road Hog]

There was a lot more that made the original Smokey and the Bandit the product of escapist fiction. For one, they would not have taken U.S. 82 east.

[KCRoadFan]

This is a long-running joke in the DC area, since so many movies and shows are set here and so few get it right.  As one egregious example, Remember the Titans was filmed mostly in Georgia because real Alexandria and Hollywood Alexandria are so different.

I know I'm replying to a 10 year old post but...

I have a hard time believing Alexandria was anything remotely close to a sleepy Southern town in the early 1970s. If you watched that movie, your impression of Alexandria would be WAY different than its reality.

Come to think of it, when DID Northern Virginia begin to take on the largely suburban character that defines it today? I would assume sometime in the 50's, shortly after World War II, like the suburbs in many other cities. However, it seems right that Northern Virginia might have gotten a jumpstart in that regard - at least pertaining to inner-ring suburbs like Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax, what with the Pentagon being built in 1941, along with the fact of workers at federal agencies needing somewhere to live, especially starting in the 1930's New Deal era and the war that began right afterwards - a period during which many new agencies were created. Anyway, some insight would be appreciated, if anyone can provide it.

[The Nature Boy]

This is a long-running joke in the DC area, since so many movies and shows are set here and so few get it right.  As one egregious example, Remember the Titans was filmed mostly in Georgia because real Alexandria and Hollywood Alexandria are so different.

I know I'm replying to a 10 year old post but...

I have a hard time believing Alexandria was anything remotely close to a sleepy Southern town in the early 1970s. If you watched that movie, your impression of Alexandria would be WAY different than its reality.

Come to think of it, when DID Northern Virginia begin to take on the largely suburban character that defines it today? I would assume sometime in the 50's, shortly after World War II, like the suburbs in many other cities. However, it seems right that Northern Virginia might have gotten a jumpstart in that regard - at least pertaining to inner-ring suburbs like Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax, what with the Pentagon being built in 1941, along with the fact of workers at federal agencies needing somewhere to live, especially starting in the 1930's New Deal era and the war that began right afterwards - a period during which many new agencies were created. Anyway, some insight would be appreciated, if anyone can provide it.

I can't answer the question directly but it looks like Alexandria would have had ~100,000 people when the events of Remember the Titans happened. The population went from ~30,000 to ~60,000 between 1940 and 1950.

[-- US 175 --]

* On Dallas, I could definitely tell when production for an outdoor scene didn't make its way to north TX--when there were clearly mountains in the background.
* Another Dallas setting goof was on the second Dallas reunion movie.  A part of the plot required a business trip to Amarillo, with one scene near a set of petroleum storage tanks (which was actually in Irving along Airport Frwy. (TX 183))--there actually are some storage tanks in Amarillo, but on the outskirts of town.  Another scene required a drive along I-40 out to the airport, that of course, became a car chase.  The problem?  I-40 (marked by a poorly-painted shield) doesn't go along a then-undeveloped portion of Las Colinas Blvd. (a 6-lane street!) in Irving.
* A TV movie in the mid-1980s reuniting much of the cast of Peyton Place, was filmed in Waxahachie, south of Dallas.  For those unfamiliar, the original primetime Peyton Place soap opera took place in New England, with mountains in the background.  Another problem with this reunion movie:  the town square in the series consisted of a park with a gazebo in the middle, but the movie went ahead with the town square setting, with one glaring problem--the Ellis County courthouse in Waxahachie made up the town square in the movie (while the series' setting had no courthouse on its square), so instead of the gazebo by itself (as in the series), it was off to the side of the courthouse.

[vdeane]

A recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was explicitly set in present-day Toronto... complete with a bridge across Lake Ontario that does not exist in reality, and will likely never exist due to how deep Lake Ontario is, even without Romulan sabotage.  The worst part?  The showrunners used the Temporal Cold War to explicitly move the dates of... certain events... in order to keep the aspiration that Star Trek is our future.  I think they forgot to do the math on their timeline!  Or investigate the difficulty of building a bridge across Lake Ontario.

For a non-roads example, The Orville had an episode involving a retail worker for Macy's living on her own in Saratoga Springs.  The nearest Macy's to Saratoga Springs is down near Albany (Colonie Center, specifically).  That's quite a commute, and I question whether a retail worker at Macy's can afford the rent to live on her own in Saratoga Springs.  Albany or Schenectady might have been more realistic.

[WillWeaverRVA]

An episode of The Wire, which had a number of episodes set in Richmond, VA, portrayed the Ashland Amtrak station as a busy heavy rail mass transit station, served by digitally edited PATH PA-5 trains.

The real train station looks like this. I think if the Richmond area ever wanted to build a commuter/heavy rail system in the region a lot of NIMBYs would have heart attacks.

US Bike Route Duplex by Will Weaver, on Flickr

[NWI_Irish96]

The West Wing's Season 4 opening double episode 20 Hours in America takes place in Indiana. Aside from none of it actually being filmed in Indiana, they have the cast going between places that make no sense.

[triplemultiplex]

A recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was explicitly set in present-day Toronto... complete with a bridge across Lake Ontario that does not exist in reality, and will likely never exist due to how deep Lake Ontario is, even without Romulan sabotage.  The worst part?  The showrunners used the Temporal Cold War to explicitly move the dates of... certain events... in order to keep the aspiration that Star Trek is our future.  I think they forgot to do the math on their timeline!  Or investigate the difficulty of building a bridge across Lake Ontario.

The thing about the Lake Ontario bridge depicted in the episode is it doesn't seem to be crossing the lake toward New York, but seems to be running parallel to the coast.  Like they just picked a nice view of the city and pointed the bridge that way.
Also I think you can tell whatever special effects wizard that CGI'd the bridge into the episode is a big fan of the new 6th St viaduct in LA.  They basically copied that design.

[mgk920]

An episode of The Wire, which had a number of episodes set in Richmond, VA, portrayed the Ashland Amtrak station as a busy heavy rail mass transit station, served by digitally edited PATH PA-5 trains.

The real train station looks like this. I think if the Richmond area ever wanted to build a commuter/heavy rail system in the region a lot of NIMBYs would have heart attacks.

US Bike Route Duplex by Will Weaver, on Flickr

The present-day Ashland, VA station is also the host to a very popular Virtual Railfan ('VRF') camera site ( https://virtualrailfan.com ).

Mike

[roadman65]

I know I mentioned before that I Dream of Jeannie showed Mountains in Florida and Cocoa Beach as a major city.

[Road Hog]

I can think of a pretty cool way Smokey and the Bandit can be rebooted for the 2020s, except it involves a truckload of state-legal cannabis being shipped from Denver to Chicago. Speaking of "Smokey...."

[TheHighwayMan3561]

A recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was explicitly set in present-day Toronto... complete with a bridge across Lake Ontario that does not exist in reality, and will likely never exist due to how deep Lake Ontario is, even without Romulan sabotage.  The worst part?  The showrunners used the Temporal Cold War to explicitly move the dates of... certain events... in order to keep the aspiration that Star Trek is our future.  I think they forgot to do the math on their timeline!  Or investigate the difficulty of building a bridge across Lake Ontario.

Trek kind of did it to itself as Voyager took a trip back to 1996 Los Angeles, which in the show's original canon was the peak of Khan's Eugenics Wars, with absolutely no evidence of such event taking place.

[vdeane]

A recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was explicitly set in present-day Toronto... complete with a bridge across Lake Ontario that does not exist in reality, and will likely never exist due to how deep Lake Ontario is, even without Romulan sabotage.  The worst part?  The showrunners used the Temporal Cold War to explicitly move the dates of... certain events... in order to keep the aspiration that Star Trek is our future.  I think they forgot to do the math on their timeline!  Or investigate the difficulty of building a bridge across Lake Ontario.

Trek kind of did it to itself as Voyager took a trip back to 1996 Los Angeles, which in the show's original canon was the peak of Khan's Eugenics Wars, with absolutely no evidence of such event taking place.

Not complaining about them moving the Eugenics Wars (I had already headcanoned that the Temporal Cold War was the cause of every inconsistency in Star Trek, and I actually liked the Temporal Cold War, so I didn't mind this being canonized), just that they screwed up the math and in the process introduced a more obvious discrepancy despite the motive to keep Star Trek as "our" future (I also loved the Greg Cox novels that retconned the Eugenics Wars as hidden behind proxy conflicts in the 90s).  Someone pointed out that they said mid-21st century earlier in the episode, so they really weren't even consistent with their own script.  Then again, the ability to do math and the ability to tell a great story tend to be mutually exclusive...

As for Voyager, that was technically an alternate timeline, so who knows what was going on there.

[Rothman]

*sees the quibbles about Star Trek canon and laughs in Doctor Who*

[Scott5114]

*sees the quibbles about Star Trek canon and laughs in Doctor Who*

My wife likes both Doctor Who and Legend of Zelda. I don't understand anything.