The Paley Center's January 21 Portlandia panel was a hoot, thanks to panelists Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein and moderator Julie Klausner. But what particularly strikes me about the show is its entire construction on the characterization of a city, Portland, Oregon, which—since I never do any work I don't have to—I will describe by pilfering from my always-eloquent colleague Arthur Smith, who interprets Portlandia's Portland as a "smug, humorless bastion of leftist ideology and ‘organic' obsessed neo-hippies." Portland isn't so much a character in Portlandia, but rather the character of Portlandia.

I've never stepped foot in Portland, though I have been to San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, and I'll say this: there's something about the Pacific Northwest that speaks to my condition. Sadly, I think it might be the relentless rain and chill. Writing in the New York Times in 1991, Timothy Egan called soft drizzle "the basic lubricant of life in the Northwest." San Diego devitalizes me; Alcatraz had me juiced for days. Go figure.

Egan's Times article, "Northwest Noir: An Art of the Serious Goofy," asserted the existence of a "Northwest noir"—films, TV series, books, music, paintings, even comic strips—either filmed or set in the region or created by people deeply influenced by their experiences there. Egan's focus was on the idiosyncratic aspects of this sensibility, particularly the quirkiness of the characters (think Northern Exposure, set in Alaska; shot in Roslyn, Washington), but I am far more intrigued by the darkness, of both the characters and the stories, clearly a metaphorical articulation of the region's mise en scѐne.  

I can identify numerous TV shows filmed or set in these parts that embody this sensibility, including three on the air now: The Killing, Grimm, and Alcatraz (which, though I admire, seems excessively bright). Chris Carter's Millennium, surely one of the darkest shows ever to air on network TV, was set here; The X-Files, also from Carter, filmed in Vancouver during seasons one to five, which—everyone involved in the show will tell you—hugely influenced its ethos.

However, any fan of the dark, twisted TV knows there's one Northwest Noir show that rules them all,  and by that I mean McLean Stevenson's Hello, Larry. (OK I'm kidding, but it was set in Portland and it was frightening). The one show I speak of is Twin Peaks, set in a Washington mill town that not only had been infiltrated by a disembodied evil spirit who went around invading people's bodies and committing all sorts of unspeakable mayhem, but also was ground zero for the cosmic battle between good and evil because of the existence of something called The Black Lodge, buried deep beneath the surface its towering forest of majestic Douglas firs. The coffee, however was damn fine. 

Here, then, is my personal list of ten favorite TV shows set in the Pacific Northwest (warning: Frasier and Grey's Anatomy are not my cup of tea):

1. Twin Peaks 

2. Millennium

3. Parenthood

4. Have Gun - Will Travel

5. The Night Strangler (TV movie)

6. Northern Exposure

7. Dark Angel

8. The Killing 

9. Alcatraz

10. The Streets of San Francisco/Ironside (tie)