Despite being the second-most populated city in the United States, Los Angeles is difficult to pin down. When people say, “New York is like a character,” you know what they mean: The Big Apple is meant to be viewed from ground-level. By comparison, L.A. sprawls between various towns and communities, with freeways connecting these disparate places. The L.A. story of someone in Beverly Hills will look different from that of someone in Los Feliz or Silver Lake.
For TV and movies, getting your hands around all this is a challenge. “Hollywood” may be synonymous with Los Angeles, but it is only one part of a massive cityscape.
It’s vital for actors and filmmakers to understand Los Angeles. If you want to be in the entertainment industry, you will almost certainly live or spend a significant amount of time there. More importantly, residents should have the opportunity to tell their stories honestly, before an outsider tries to tell it for them.
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The following TV shows and movies aren’t a comprehensive list of every L.A. project. But they do provide an overview of what it means to be a “Los Angeles story” rather than a story simply shot in Los Angeles. Countless shows and movies are filmed on a backlot somewhere in Hollywood, but these works show the city as itself, conveying it as more than Tinseltown.
The Guide To Becoming an Actor in L.A. “Insecure” (2016–2021)
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Issa Rae’s acclaimed HBO dramedy follows best friends and Stanford grads Issa (Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji) as they work their way through the awkwardness of being in their 20s in South Los Angeles. What makes “Insecure” a standout isn’t just its attention to minor details of life in L.A., but the fact it’s speaking from a distinct perspective that rarely receives the attention it deserves in popular media. While there’s no shortage of shows about being upper middle class or outright wealthy in Los Angeles, “Insecure” gets you much closer to how many Angelinos live their daily lives.
“Bosch” (2014–2021)
This Prime Video series, based on Michael Connelly’s novels, follows Titus Welliver as LAPD detective Harry Bosch, who works various cases across the Los Angeles area. What makes “Bosch” unique is Connelly’s knowledge of what it means to move throughout L.A., not simply as a means of solving a crime; instead, the city becomes integral to its lead character’s perspective. It’s one thing to have an “NCIS” show in Los Angeles, but “Bosch” knows how long it takes to get from one neighborhood to another.
“Dragnet” (1951–1959, revival 1967–1970)
“Dragnet” is a tricky show because you have to push it through a flattering portrait of the police that never measured up to reality. Nor was the show ever interested in the interiority of its main characters, like on “Bosch.” That being said, it’s important to have an understanding of Los Angeles outside a contemporary lens, and so we go back to the 1950s and late 1960s to see Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and his partner venture out into the city to investigate crimes. It’s not always a flattering portrait of Los Angeles—the LAPD represents order in the face of new chaos that arrives every week—but it helps convey the changing face of the city as well as what still stands decades later.
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” (2000–2024)
Larry David took his pessimism and sharp eye for setting from New York on “Seinfeld” to Los Angeles on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” While David, playing a version of himself, resides in comfortable enclaves one would expect from the wealthy co-creator of one of the biggest sitcoms of all time, there’s typically a nice and humorous contrast of Larry’s petty grievances against the plush confines of upscale L.A. living. Sometimes, the best way to take in a city is through the eyes of someone who sees it as inherently silly or ridiculous.
“Californication” (2007–2014)
This Showtime dramedy ran for seven years and follows a human trainwreck of a novelist, Hank Moody (David Duchovny). If “Curb Your Enthusiasm” strolls around golf courses and mansions, then “Californication” takes us to the seedier places in Los Angeles. The portrait of Hollywood as a den of sin is, occasionally, closer to true than false, and that’s where “Californication” lives. While the show can veer into the late 2000s/early 2010s need to be edgy—since that’s where shows such as “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” and “Breaking Bad” were leading televised drama—“Californication” at least offers viewers a specific sense of place, even if they may not have been thrilled to visit those places.
A few more L.A. TV shows worth seeing:
- “Six Feet Under” (2001–2005)
- “Episodes” (2011–2017)
- “Beef” (2023-present)
- “You’re the Worst” (2014–2019)
- “Barry” (2018–2023)
Thinking About Moving to L.A. to Pursue Acting? Here's How to Prepare “Los Angeles Plays Itself” (2003), dir. Thom Andersen
If you want to learn about the decades of movies and shows set in Los Angeles and the tension between dramatizing the city and showing its reality, you can’t do any better than Andersen’s video essay “Los Angeles Plays Itself.” Even at almost three hours long, Andersen’s film at times feels like it’s only scratching the surface of themes such as what it means for Los Angeles to serve as a character, whose stories get told, and how locals view the city versus tourists. This film should be your starting point before embarking on a trip through movies set in Los Angeles.
“Killer of Sheep” (1978), dir. Charles Burnett
Burnett’s depiction of life in the Watts district is hard to find these days, but worth seeking out. Shot in an almost Italian neorealist style, the movie starts by following a slaughterhouse worker named Stan (Henry G. Sanders). From him, it spirals outward to show the lives of family, friends, and other working-class residents trying to make their way through 1970s Los Angeles. There are plenty of L.A. stories that will give you glamour, and those are all well and good. But don’t turn away from the hard-won honesty and empathy you’ll see in a film like “Killer of Sheep.”
“Chinatown” (1974), dir. Roman Polanski
Set in 1937, Polanski’s noir story is one of L.A. myth trying to grapple with its reality. Jack Nicholson plays private detective Jake Gittes, who’s hired by a woman, Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), to spy on her husband, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. This investigation leads Gittes into a far larger scandal that impacts the entire city. Aside from being a giant of the noir genre, “Chinatown” is fascinating for its gritty “New Hollywood” mentality creating a 1930s Los Angeles, based on a true history of water theft in the first decade of the 1900s. When you stack these perspectives on top of each other, a powerful picture emerges of how L.A. views its own history.
“Jackie Brown” (1997), dir. Quentin Tarantino
Although Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he grew up in Torrance and his love of Los Angeles runs through his filmography. It’s difficult to choose just one Tarantino film when there are options such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” but “Jackie Brown” gets us to the street level in a unique way. Here, Tarantino embraces L.A. as it is in the late ’90s. He’ll follow a car around an unassuming block to carry out a hit or set a major scheme inside a shopping mall. It’s great if a filmmaker wants to make famous landmarks part of their L.A. vision, but Tarantino is like a friend showing you where to go when you live in the city, not just when you’re visiting.
“La La Land” (2016), dir. Damien Chazelle
Perhaps native Angelinos will grit their teeth at a traffic jam opening into a sunny musical number in Chazelle’s “La La Land.” But it’s clear that the Oscar-winning director wanted to craft a stylized love letter to the city where a visit to the Griffith Observatory is enough to make his lovestruck leads literally float on air. Understanding the gritty reality of a city is important, but you can’t ignore fantasy, either, because fantasy is what makes a city live in the imagination. “La La Land” argues that Los Angeles is not without romance and that cities such as Paris and New York have not cornered the market on love.
A few more L.A. movies worth seeing:
- “Mulholland Drive” (2001), dir. David Lynch
- “The Long Goodbye” (1973), dir. Robert Altman
- “Heat” (1995), dir. Michael Mann
- “Boyz n the Hood” (1991), dir. John Singleton
- “Inherent Vice” (2014), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
As Andersen points out in “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” you can easily lose sight of Los Angeles because of how the city is constructed. But hopefully these movies and shows will bring you a bit closer to understanding the city, even if you’ve never walked its streets or driven its freeways.