The Duffer Brothers' new Netflix series The Boroughs may be set in a fictional New Mexico retirement community, but most of it was shot for real in and around Albuquerque — and several of the locations are places travellers can actually see.
The show's centerpiece, the cul-de-sac of desert homes where Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman, Clarke Peters and Denis O'Hare uncover an otherworldly threat, wasn't built in a real suburb at all. The houses were constructed on the Netflix Studios Albuquerque lot south of the city, and they're clearly visible on Google Maps satellite view. With the Sandia Mountains on the horizon, the fake neighbourhood blends convincingly into the real landscape.
A couple of genuine Albuquerque buildings do appear, though. The Manor, one of the community's key buildings, was partly shot at the former Ramada by Wyndham Albuquerque East, an old motel just off I-40 in the city's northeast that is now being converted into — fittingly — an actual retirement community. The sleek glass structure seen in the series is the First Plaza Galleria downtown, a 1972 Harry Weese-designed former bank headquarters that now houses an underground shopping arcade.
The abandoned desert town Art visits in the second episode takes viewers further afield: it's the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe, a Western film ranch established in the 1940s that has hosted countless Hollywood productions.
For fans planning a trip, Albuquerque makes an easy base. Netflix's expanding studio complex has turned the city into one of America's busiest production hubs, and the Sandia Mountains frame the skyline everywhere you go. Santa Fe is an hour's drive north, with Bonanza Creek just south of the city — though as a working ranch it isn't a formal tourist attraction, so admire from the roadside.
Why it matters: New Mexico has quietly become the stand-in for half the shows on streaming TV, and this trail of locations — a fake suburb you can spot from space, a motel becoming a real retirement community, a modernist arcade downtown — is a fun, low-effort itinerary for anyone visiting the Southwest with a streaming queue to satisfy.
