Location, Location, Location

Television isn’t just made in L.A. and N.Y. anymore, adding authenticity to ‘city-as-a-character’ themes in series shot across the country

N REAL ESTATE, location is everything, and that’s equally true of the TV business, where tax incentives, production costs and travel logistics can make the difference between whether a series set in Boston is actually shot in Boston or on a Paramount Studios soundstage. There was a time, in fact, when Los Angeles and New York were dueling hubs for smallscreen productions, when if you wanted to carve out a career in TV you had to live in either city. There were no filming locations, no post-production houses. Then came cities including Vancouver and Toronto. And then Chicago, where such series as “Shameless,” “Suits,” “The Chi” and “Empire” shoot, adding an aesthetic authenticity to the storyline and poetic pulse of each show. More recently, similar up-and- coming hubs have been formed in places from coast to coast.

Portland, Ore., is a city whose reputation and identity is almost singularly informed by IFC’S “Portlandia,” the Emmy-winning sketch-comedy series created by Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein and Jonathan Krisel that ended its eight-season run this year.

“When Fred and Carrie and Jon initially made that first season of ‘Portlandia,’ the dream was that it would become this culturally relevant touchpoint for the Pacific Northwest,” says Christine Lubrano, senior vice president of original programming at IFC. “I think we were all very aware that we were making a very little show at the time, so that was very much a dream. But it is a dream come true. The cultural relevance of ‘Portlandia’ and what it’s done for Portland is really incredible and speaks to not only the people creating ‘Portlandia,’ but Portland itself as a city.”

Before the series aired, Portland was a city known for its spectacular rose garden and dewy, thickly forested outskirts, plus Voodoo Doughnut