Last weekend, the internet was set ablaze with musings about “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.” The new Netflix original series generated so much hype that BuzzFeed even dedicated an article to the many reactions blasted across social media, most of which had fans pondering if the show is even real. Well, rest assured, not only is it very real but very funny, though the premise might not sound so. The comedy/thriller explores the story of grief-stricken divorcée/ombrophobe Anna Whitaker (Kristen Bell), who believes she has witnessed a murder in the house across the street. When no one takes her seriously (due to her penchant for mixing red wine and Class 4 psychotropics), she decides to take matters into her own hands and solve the darn thing herself.
Considering the lengthy, circuitous title, the show obviously isn’t your traditional thriller but is instead a parody of overly-dramatic Lifetime Original Movies and the like, which just grows more and more utterly ridiculous as things unfold. Creators Rachel Ramras, Hugh Davidson and Larry Dorf also looked to the written word for inspiration. As Ramras told Collider, “I love these books, just like so many people – “Gone Girl,” “The Girl on the Train,” “The Woman in the Window,” “The Woman in Cabin 10,” and the list goes on. It just struck us as very funny that the plots of these books are almost always identical, but they’re bingey, and they’re fun, and they’re exciting, and I could read a hundred of them. There’s either ‘woman’ or ‘girl’ in the title of all of them, so it started with this absurd title. Then, it was deciding how overtly funny we were gonna make this. The tone we settled on, we hope and think is the most successful.”
If success can be measured in numbers, I’d say the trio met their goal. The delightful spoof promptly hit Netflix’s number one spot the day it debuted and is still holding strong to the position.
Set in a picturesque but fictional New Hampshire town where, unfortunately for Anna, it rains a lot, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” was actually lensed in its entirety in Los Angeles, with the majority of filming taking place in the San Gabriel Valley. A few area spots utilized include (and be forewarned, there are some minor spoilers ahead!) Sierra Madre’s Lunch Salon, where Anna and her BFF Sloane (Mary Holland) get mani/pedis in episode six. Anna regularly visits the inexplicably changing grave of her daughter at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena. She shops – and overhears her neighbor gossiping about her – at Howie’s Market in San Gabriel, the same spot where Neil Coleman (Tom Riley) later meets Lisa Maines (Shelley Hennig) in episode five. And the former Glendale Police Station at 140 N. Isabel St. (which also makes several appearances in “The Little Things”) stands in for Anna’s local police department.