Congeries of cross connected concepts
Transtrerrestial Musings complains about the poor geography in the TV series “24”. Personally I think that if I were writing such a show, I would deliberately refer to non-existent locations for the same reason I would use a “555” telephone number. It’s hardly critical to the story and it avoids possible unpleasantness for anyone who might work or reside at some location that becomes inadvertently famous via the show.
| Andrea Harris Wednesday, 01 April 2009 at 00:14 |  |
Actually, made-up countries used to be a staple of spy drama tv. I’m thinking of shows like Mission: Impossible and The Man From Uncle. It wasn’t just a way of avoiding tying the show down too closely to current events (and engendering unwelcome controversy instead of advertising dollars), it was a tradition in adventure fiction going back to at least the nineteenth century. I tend to think of novels like The Prisoner of Zenda, with it’s setting in the fictional country of “Ruritania,” and other like stories, as being the product of a more secure age, when people weren’t as worried that they weren’t making sure the world knew their opinions on the Important Matters In Real Life Today, most of which will be forgotten in ten years. I mean, “24” is fiction, isn’t it? Who cares if the geography is bad? It’s not like they are doing a documentary. (And we all know how accurate and fact-checked too many “non-fiction” documentaries are… not!)
