Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: the next best thing to being there. Even with the currencies of the United States and Canada nearing parity, Vancouver offers so many production plusses that TV and movie producers continue to flock here.

Here’s the scoop: tax incentives, more realistic unions, moderate year-round climate, and a huge local pool of acting and technical talent aside, Vancouver looks like everywhere. There are beaches, snow-capped mountains, redwood forests, farms, city streets, and suburbs all within a 20-minute drive from each other.

And the actors? Because of work quotas, a great deal of them are Canadian, Australian and British. Just think, some of America’s favorite Americans are, well, not.

Here are just some of the TV shows filming here this year:

Fringe - producers were chased away from an unaccommodating New York, so season two will film in Vancouver.

V - lizard people return in this update / remake of the 80’s TV series.

Caprica - the prequel to Vancouver’s recent Battlestar Galactica.

Stargate Universe - there’s not a person in Vancouver who hasn’t seen a location shoot for one of the three Stargate series.

Sanctuary - season two of the show about a halfway house for monsters. What is it about Vancouver that attracts the monsters?

Smallville - Starting their ninth season, this show is perhaps the biggest employer of teen and twentysomething extras of all the Vancouver productions.

Defying Gravity - season one of this sci fi wraps this month.

Supernatural - season five gears up for these ghost-hunting brothers.

The Vampire Diaries - cashing in on the insatiable thirst of Twilight fans everywhere for more and more vampires.

Human Target - no monsters, but our hero takes the place of targeted murder victims in order to catch the killers.

The Good Wife - a new legal melodrama starring former movie stars.

Psych - season four of the fake psychic who helps police solve cases.

Harper Island - if any character survives this Vancouver production, I wonder if there’ll be a season two.

Of course, they make a movie or two up here, as well. The X-Files returned to Vancouver for their last movie, and our local high school - well known to fans of 21 Jump Street - was used in the latest Wolverine movie. The Twilight sequel New Moon just finished, but the follow-up to that - Eclipse - will start in a few months. The A-Team is also in pre-production.

Tron 2.0 is filming now, as is Hot Tub Time Machine, Percy Jackson, and Ramona and Beezus. Starting in the coming months is Sucker Punch, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Marmaduke. And those are just some of the bigger-budget films.

In upcoming blogs, we’ll cover some of the interplay between film production and local life (the traffic jams, oy!).

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