“Russian Doll”

(Tompkins Square Park, New York City)

Unpack your bags:

“One thing that was important to [star] Natasha [Lyonne] was that we explore the themes of the show in their actual settings,” says co-creator (with Amy Poehler and Lyonne) Leslye Headland. “It was important to her that the show is a bit of a ghost story; New York is haunted by past New Yorkers and all the travesties from earlier generations. We knew we really wanted to inhabit Tompkins Square Park rather than force it into the structure of the show. We considered it our snow globe.”

View on the ground:

“I didn’t want the show to have the ‘Friends’ thing, like, ‘They wouldn’t have an apartment like that!’ ” says location manager Joe Sevey. “The [show creators] were on top of all of it, like, ‘I need a [grittier] apartment.’ It added a whole other layer; they didn’t try to gloss over the experience. They wanted a sense of an old New York neighborhood that was still around, and there aren’t that many left.”