Why TV’s Small Cities Are Having a Large Season

Madison River Valley, Montana

The Clyburn household, led by matriarch Stacy (Michelle Pfeiffer, left) relocates from NYC to the Madison River Valley of Southwest Montana following the dying of her husband in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ drama. “In a story about grief, and the way it changes us, it was important for these characters to be both broken and unbreakable,” says director Christina Alexandra Voros. As for capturing in Three Forks, Montana, she provides: “The physical landscape of The Madison was both our greatest gift and our greatest adversary. We were up against the weather, terrain, river currents and even the shortening daylight of Montana’s indecisive autumn. When the geography is a main character — the main character in ways — doing that landscape justice was as imperative as finding the heartbeat of every scene.”

Close to Albuquerque/Santa Fe, New Mexico

“The Boroughs is about a specific town that doesn’t actually exist, so we had to build it,” collection creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews say of their Netflix collection during which residents of a New Mexico retirement village face off with its house owners, who wish to drain their brains to feed a vampiric creature whose blood retains them younger. “The main challenge was it had to be a place you’d want to live if it weren’t for the monster problem.” Manufacturing designer Ruth Ammon crafted the idyllic neighborhood in the course of the desert, the co-creators noting that “the Boroughs had to feel like a bubble — beautiful, but precarious. Far enough away from the next town over that you felt the isolation, but in a believable way.” As for the solid, led by Alfred Molina, they add: “It was very important to us that these retirees were first and foremost seen as heroes. … While they may have sad or funny moments, they were never to be pitied or made the butt of the joke.”

Colorado

Season one in every of Paradise was all concerning the underground bunker metropolis constructed into the Colorado mountains (and filmed on the Warner Bros. lot), however season two of Dan Fogelman’s postapocalyptic Hulu thriller strikes aboveground. “It was important we showed a world coming back to life but also a world that had gone through a great tragedy,” says EP John Hoberg. “We wanted that sense of traveling through Americana but seeing it through different eyes.” That additionally meant distinguishing between the trauma of the individuals above- and beneath floor, together with Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma). “You can feel the presence of loss and trauma in the bunker; it’s always lurking,” says Hoberg. “When we went aboveground, we needed to feel something different — a feeling of people who survived. They had to learn to thrive in a dangerous, complicated world where they ultimately found community, kindness and love.”

Sure, in fact Los Angeles is a sprawling metropolis however one whose drama is usually powered by transplants from small-town America. With shoot days for TV productions in L.A. declining 28 % quarter-over-quarter within the first 4 months of 2026, you’ll be able to’t overlook this present shot within the Metropolis of Angels that so precisely — and hilariously — captures the battle of newcomers attempting to make it within the leisure biz. “What was so exciting about building out our world for I Love LA was getting to lean into the hyper-specificity of this group of friends and the world they inhabit,” say co-showrunners, writers and EPs Rachel Sennott and Emma Barrie. Sennott, who created the present, additionally stars as an aspiring expertise supervisor struggling to rein in wild-child consumer and pal Tallulah Stiel (Odessa A’zion, pictured within the mural). “There’s an easy trap to fall into when portraying the world of influencers where the characters aren’t grounded or feel over-the-top. Even though our characters are comedy characters, we wanted to keep the emotional stakes real, and our actors helped do this by asking questions and finding motivation behind everything they did,” the writers add. “L.A. is such a big and vibrant city, and it means something different to everyone. ”

Midland/Odessa, Texas

In portraying the numerous cogs within the wheel that’s the billion-dollar Texas oil enterprise, Christian Wallace, who created the collection with Sheridan, says, “It’s important that we do justice to the roughnecks and blue-collar workers of West Texas who do the tough, dangerous jobs that power modern society.” The solid and crew needed to tough it out simply the identical whereas filming the Paramount+ drama led by Billy Bob Thornton. “The Permian Basin oil fields of West Texas and New Mexico are massive and remote, roughly the size of the U.K. and nearly five hours west of our production base in Fort Worth,” explains Wallace. “The elements are stacked against you out there: rough dust storms, desert heat, hailstorms, rattlesnakes and dangerous machinery pretty much everywhere. But all that feeds into the visual language of the show. There’s a rugged beauty to the Permian that’s unlike any place in the country — if you squint hard enough to see it.”

Maine

The fictional city of Derry is nicely established in Stephen King’s 1986 novel It and the next movies, so when it got here to the HBO collection, “It’s more than the space that we were portraying; it’s the time when the season happened, which is in 1962,” says Barbara Muschietti, who co-developed the prequel with brother Andy Muschietti. “This was a year of huge upheaval in the U.S. and in the world. We’re still relatively close to the terrible effects of the Second World War when we’re transitioning into a world that wants peace and is understanding the need for equality. But it’s still in a town that is stuck in time and is weaponized with fear.” It’s the latter that makes the townspeople (together with Jovan Adepo, and Blake Cameron James) a simple goal for the titular bogeyman Pennywise, provides Andy. “He is weaponizing all these things that are so relevant in what’s going on in today’s reality in America, and in the world. The division targets race and the desire to divide and conquer, and that was an opportunity to revisit those themes.”

Westmont Village, New York

Whereas viewers is perhaps impressed by the show of wealth within the fictional prosperous, suburban city the place this Apple TV collection takes place, it’s the true residents of Westchester, New York, the place the present is filmed, who wanted persuading of its validity. “Chances are, anyone who owns the kind of home we want to shoot in has no need for our location fee,” says creator Jonathan Tropper, who quips of the “complex scouting process to find homeowners who were artistically minded” to allow them to movie of their houses a number of instances per season — “A photo with Jon Hamm only gets you so far.” However it’s Hamm (proper, with Amanda Peet) who manages to make audiences by some means really feel sorry for a financier who begins robbing his neighbors when he loses his job. “When it comes to the wealthy, there’s a danger in defaulting to stereotype and caricature. But no one invests emotionally in characters like that,” provides Tropper. “We take great pains in the writing and casting of the show to make sure our characters are three-dimensional, flawed, redeemable and, above all, relatable, even if sometimes their lifestyles are not.”

St. Louis, Missouri

“Placing unusual tension in what at first should seem to audiences like safe and familiar suburban atmospheres was our biggest challenge and opportunity,” says creator Steven Conrad of his HBO drama, during which a love triangle of three middle-aged adults — Jason Bateman, above left; Linda Cardellini; and David Harbour, above proper — who join through a relationship app referred to as DTF St. Louis ends in homicide. Although filmed in Atlanta, the settings within the collection, like the area people pool the place Floyd’s (Harbour) physique is discovered and the baseball discipline the place Carol (Cardellini) picks up a aspect job as a bit league umpire, condense the characters’ surroundings into the trimmings from which they wish to escape. “The cast did extraordinary work conveying dangerous impulses in a way that always seemed human and recognizable among people with settled ambitions and family life,” provides Conrad. “They always felt like the world around me.”

Hinkley Hills

Taking pictures on the enduring Colonial Road at Common Studios, the identical location as the unique 1989 Tom Hanks function, creator Celeste Hughey says when writing the Peacock comedy, “I wanted to avoid populating our neighborhood with suburban caricatures but also wanted to portray familiar archetypes — the busybody, the rule stickler, the enigma, etc. — in a way that felt specific and relatable. Having neighbors is a universal reality, and people are inherently weird, so we put together this group of oddballs who range in age, race and life experience,” she says of the solid led by Keke Palmer, who tries to uncover the historical past of a mysterious home within the Ashfield Place cul-de-sac. “Our core [characters] wouldn’t necessarily be friends outside of their proximity, and yet they find community through their shared weirdness, need for connection and love of wine.”

Delaware County, Pennsylvania

Present creator Brad Ingelsby had a transparent purpose in thoughts when crafting this crime thriller during which a Philly FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) leads a job drive investigating a string of stash home robberies: “Giving working-class characters complexity,” he says. “Too often, we attribute tragedy to the rich or highly placed — CEOs and kings. I wanted to feel the dreams, regrets, desires, failures and betrayals of a trash man and a priest. Because I know they exist.” To make sure the actors relayed that feeling onscreen, filming in Delco, the place the HBO collection is ready, was a should, provides Ingelsby. “They visit coffee shops, bars and restaurants. They interact with the people and overhear conversations. They see what the locals are wearing, driving, listening to. It seeps into an actor’s bloodstream, and it translates to the screen. They have an authority over their character they wouldn’t have if we were shooting somewhere else.”

New England

“We wanted to build a world that felt small enough to believe you’d never heard of it but large enough to suggest there were countless nooks and crannies still left to explore on this strange little island,” says creator Katie Dippold of the fictional New England city the place the Apple TV comedy horror is ready. That meant “large stages for the elaborate builds — the inn, town hall, the Salty Whale, their homes, even a water tank,” she provides of filming in coastal Massachusetts cities, noting, “The feeling of being on an island, slightly cut off from the rest of the world, is central to the show.” Matthew Rhys’ Mayor Tom Loftis (above proper, with Stephen Root) desires to alter the distant repute of the island and switch it right into a vacationer vacation spot towards the need of locals who’re satisfied the land is haunted — the kind of superstition you solely get in a small, tight-knit neighborhood — which added one more layer to the world-building on set. “Most importantly, we wanted an atmosphere that felt cozy and lived-in,” provides Dippold. “The kind of place you’d want to wander around and get lost in — even if it meant you might die there.”

This story appeared within the June 10 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.