Some houses become characters. You remember them better than the dialogue, you know where the kitchen is and which stairs lead to the room where the thing happened. From Monterey to Marbella, via the Albufera, Madrid and Newport Beach - the nine addresses below belong to that category. Some are real properties, others are sets built in a studio - and that difference changes a lot.

When the house is more expensive than the story

Madeline Mackenzie's house from „Big Little Lies\" stands on the shore in Malibu, even though the series places it in fictional Monterey. Enormous windows, open architecture, the whole ocean brought inside. The same property was previously the family home in „Hannah Montana\" - which means one and the same space sold two completely different lives to two different audiences. If that does not say something about what we are actually buying when we watch, nothing will.

Jay and Gloria's house from „Modern Family\" is in Brentwood, Los Angeles, around 590 square metres with a garden and a pool - the largest and tidiest of the three families in the series, and that is deliberate. That size is part of the characterisation. Gloria brings in Latin American colours and turns the pool into a gathering place, which is the only thing in that house that genuinely transfers.

Luxury as a message, not as comfort

Benjamín Blanco's home from „Elite\" is in Majadahonda near Madrid - minimalist architecture, open spaces, a pool. The production described it as „a museum-like dwelling with around 68 works of art\". That is not the description of a home, it is the description of a statement. Villa Moana in Mijas bay in „Los Farad\" performs the same function for the eighties in Marbella: sports cars, yachts, eternal summer and a house that exists to show the owner has arrived.

Villa La Cassinella on Lake Como, in „Succession\", is a story about a different kind of money. A private 19th-century estate reachable only by boat, with gardens, a panorama and a pool - and near-absolute isolation. The production filmed at the real property, which until then had never been made available to television. There, luxury is not for showing. That is the point.

The houses that really are houses

Here is the nuance worth the most. Verónica's home from „The Marina\" stands in El Palmar, in the Albufera area - an old farmhouse with a Mediterranean aesthetic. The facade is a real location, but the interior was rebuilt in a studio, because when they found it there was fire damage inside. The same goes for „He Yes\" - the exterior is from Malibu, the interior is a set.

The Fisher family house from „The Summer I Turned Pretty\" is in Porters Neck Plantation, Wilmington, North Carolina - a white wooden facade, porches, a garden. Every summer everyone returns there, and the house functions as the heart of the story. The same logic runs through Emily Thorne's house from „Revenge\" in Southport: a big porch, a view, an idyllic atmosphere - and all of it staged to conceal a much darker story.

The one you really can spend the night in

Villa Olimpia in Jávea, facing the island of Portitxol and Cap Negre, is Patricia Segura's home in „Breathless\". Around 800 square metres across three floors, with wide terraces and an infinity pool, designed by the studio Pepe Gimeno Arquitectos and built in 2021. And unlike all the others, this one is rented out as tourist accommodation.

It is the only one of the nine you can verify with your own eyes, and that is exactly what makes it the most useful. Because not one of these places was designed for living - it was designed for a camera, which means for a view from one precisely determined spot. What actually transfers to a normal flat is neither the floor area nor the pool, but three small things all nine share: light entering from two sides, furniture that does not block the way through, and one genuinely comfortable armchair facing the window rather than the television.