I always enjoy how poorly shows hide the fact that they aren't shot abroad and are busy trying to fake it.
Lost does a bad job of hiding Hawaii in its non-island segments, although there was one sequence shot in the UK when they needed Alan Dale who was on stage in London at the time and otherwise unavailable. The only other recent show I can recall obviously filming elsewhere, aside from those brief bits in CSI when they actually go to the city they proclaim to be set in, is an episode of Bones set in London. It was pretty dire, but clearly shot here. I guess Alias would be the modern day equivalent of I Spy in its globe-trotting ambitions without ever traveling more than a few miles from Burbank or wherever. At least they managed to avoid the real sin of using ancient, but otherwise cheap, stock footage to scene set. If it's a western European city that you're supposed to be in, but all the cars look like they're from the mid-eighties, then that's as bad as those old Tarzen films that spliced in various nature scenes into them. As well as I Spy, there was a period in the seventies when international co-productions meant plenty of location shoots: The Persuaders with Roger Moore and Tony Curtis was shot all over southern Europe; The New Avengers was shot in the UK, and, er, Canada; and The Return of the Saint also filmed across Europe. I guess that squeezed budgets have probably stopped this kind of thing beyond factual programmes. Although in the UK there's still plenty of moving around for budgetry purposes: Robin Hood was shot in Hungary; and Merlin (which may not be troubling the NBC schedules anytime soon, but has just been recommissioned for a third season) is partly shot in France. Adam On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Mark J. <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Dec 14, 11:24 am, Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I've been catching some of the shows on the Retro channel and two > >> stand out for their laughably poor portrayal of overseas locations. > >> "I Spy" actually does a better job of the two. They seem to have a > >> simple formula: Shoot a lot at night, or make it look like night, so > >> viewers don't get a good view of the surroundings. Robert Culp was > >> running around in one episode in what's supposed to be a southeast > >> Asia jungle but it reminded me a lot of that park I used to drive by > >> on Los Feliz on my way from the Burbank airport to my friend's West > >> Hollywood home. > >> I don't know what it looked like on 1960s TV screens, but one episode > >> showed Cosby and Culp at a Tet parade. They did an especially poor job > >> of blending stock New Year's footage on a street with what was > >> obviously a group of people sitting on a stage in Burbank or Studio > >> City or some place like that. It just stuck out on my high def screen. > > > > That's surprising, considering that "I Spy" always made a big deal > > that Cosby and Culp did a lot of overseas shooting. In fact, I always > > thought the show was shot entirely on location and seem to remember > > the credit "The producers thank the National Broadcasting Company's > > Far East News Bureau for their cooperation in the production of this > > program." > > I agree with Mark on this one. I own "I Spy" on DVD, including the two > episodes with "DVD commentary" (I put that in quotes because all they > really did was put Robert Culp in a room and let him babble to himself > about the series, then laid that track over the first two episodes of > the series). All of the exteriors were shot on location, though most > of the interiors were shot back in Hollywood. Granted, Hong Kong > doubled or tripled as every major Asian city, but the exteriors were > filmed in Hong Kong. I know they went to Japan for a while, too. And > Italy doubled as Greece. When I watch the episodes, I'm usually > impressed with the location shooting, and wish there was a way to find > room in the budget for modern shows to shoot around the world as > opposed to New York, Canada, or Hollywood. > > One way "I Spy" worked out budgeting location shoots was to shoot > several scripts in a given place at once, but stagger the episodes in > the schedule. So they might film eight episodes in Hong Kong, but they > wouldn't air eight Hong Kong episodes in a row. The network committed > to a full season, which allowed the crew the freedom to plan that far > in advance. > -- > Kevin M. (RPCV) > > -- > TV or Not TV .... 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