'La Brea,' the NBC Drama, Captures the Aftermath of an Unprecedented Catastrophe

Season 1 of David Applebaum's drama La Brea opened with a harrowing scene.

Eve Harris (Natalie Zea) is a single working mom, and her two teenage kids, Izzy (Zyra Gorecki) and Josh (Jack Martin), are trying to get to school on time while battling L.A. traffic. But just as Josh exchanges a flirtatious glance with a girl sitting in the car in the next lane, a catastrophe of biblical proportions rears its ugly head.

So, what is La Brea about?

La Brea takes an imagined catastrophe as its starting point and weaves a complex story around it. After a mysterious sinkhole opens in the heart of Los Angeles, the survivors above ground face no choice but to carry out an investigation and work out what caused the tragedy. Meanwhile, those who fell into the sinkhole have to fight for survival alongside strangers in an unexplainable primeval world.

As David Applebaum told Beverly Hills Magazine, he first came up with the idea for the show after stumbling upon a photo of a sinkhole. Haunted by the image, he eventually started to work on a storyboard that told the story of the experiences of a group of people whose lives are affected by a sinkhole one way or another.

"It started with an image of a sinkhole in the middle of Los Angeles. It was just something that I hadn't seen before, and an image that I just couldn’t shake and I thought that would be an interesting way to open a TV show," he said. "I didn't really have a story associated with it, I just knew that I wanted to pursue the image."

As David told Syfy, the changes the members of the Harris family have to go through will be the focal point of the drama.

"It is really about a family," he said. "There are lots of ideas that are big and noisy, but without deep emotional connection, people won’t respond. And so the emotional story is about all of the survivors."

La Brea heavily references the Los Angeles La Brea Tar Pits, a natural landmark located just a stone's throw away from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Craft Contemporary. But the drama wasn't filmed in L.A.

Shooting for Season 1 reportedly kicked off in the spring of 2021 and lasted well into September 2021. The crew transformed Melbourne, Australia and its surroundings into the streets of Los Angeles, per MailOnline.

Filming locations included Port Melbourne's Bay Street, a bustling street popular for its shops, cafes, and laid-back restaurants. Some scenes were filmed in Melbourne suburbs like Coburg Hill, Essendon Fields, or Pascoe Vale. The crew also visited other spots in the state of Victoria, including the seaside town Rye.

Season 2 also picked up filming in the surrounding areas.

New episodes of La Brea air on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.