Viva Las Vegas! How TV is tossing out old cliches to show a new side of Sin City

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Set us as preferred It’s bright.It’s superficial.

It’s loud.It’s hot.

It’s expensive.It’s a 24-hour debauched party if you happen to be a young, pretty person.So many of the stereotypes people have about Los Angeles are shared with Las Vegas.

And, ironically, those images exist largely because of the ways that Nevada’s biggest city is portrayed in Hollywood movies and TV series.Kim Spurgeon, the director of filming commission Film Nevada, has come to expect it.“I take the line of all press is good press,” she says.

Even though Southern Nevada has unique attributes, she acknowledges that “we do get a lot of the same tropes of storytelling that come to film here.Vegas often plays a character in these storylines, and that character can be very one-dimensional.”Spurgeon says her organization is happy to help filmmakers create their versions of drunken bachelorette parties or slick gangster heists, but she is also delighted when productions find new and creative ways to use the city.

And, this Emmy season, several nominated series did just that.“Vegas is so intrinsically part of the Deborah Vance story,” says Lucia Aniello, the co-creator, director and writer of the HBO Max Emmy darling “Hacks,” in which the city plays home to Jean Smart’s glass-ceiling-shattering and business-savvy stand-up.“She never really had mainstream success as a comedian in New York and L.A.

and she was able to find it in Vegas.And I think Vegas symbolizes a do-it-yourself ethos that Deborah Vance really believes in.”Through “Hacks’” five seasons, Aniello and her co-creators Paul W.

Downs and Jen Statsky, and their writing and production teams, have shown that even the “boring” sides of Vegas — the staff cafeterias or empty convention centers — can be made compelling in the right hands.In its most rec...