50 best television shows set across the United States

Pennsylvania: Pretty Little Liars

The premise: This show, originally airing on ABC Family, is one of the most complicated and hard to follow shows in recent history. There are so many plot twists, double stories, character turns, and cliffhangers that it becomes sport just to keep up with who is doing what to whom.

At it’s most basic level, it’s about a group of girls with dicey pasts who get cyberbullied. A mysterious force knows about all the terrible things they’ve done. That force sends cryptic and threatening text messages, sending the girls on all sorts of dangerous hijinks.

The setting: The show, at first, didn’t place much emphasis on the setting but as the show wore on, Rosewood became a hub for all sorts of bad behavior. Geography became even more important when Pretty Little Liars spawned a spin-off by the name of Ravenswood. Rosewood, Ravenswood and the neighboring Brookhaven form a trifecta of bad luck and unfortunate circumstances.

The most Pennsylvania thing about it: Although the town of Rosewood is totally made up, the show’s mythology places it about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. A handful of their adventures require venturing into the big city, and they take their antics all over the Main Line. While it goes without saying that Pennsylvania is far more than just Philadelphia, the show does a pretty good job of taking locally known stops and locales and translating them for the show.