In Tin Star, Little Big Bear is a small town packed to the brim with secrets – and the show takes full advantage of the picturesque landscape.

Unfortunately, Little Big Bear is not a real place, but the Canadian Rocky Mountains house the locations for what brought the town to life. Thankfully, there’s a lot less corruption and trouble going on than the show will have you believe.

So, if you want to relive the show for yourself, or just want some time away somewhere quiet, here’s where you find the real Little Big Bear.

Location: High River, Canada (approx. 33 miles outside Calgary)

With its dramatic landscapes, long cinematic roads, and a lush mountain idyll, the tiny town of Little Big Bear is the perfect setting for a drama such as Tin Star.

Nestled in the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, the unique settlement acts simultaneously as a sanctuary, an escape, and a prison. Under threat from encroaching civilisation brought on by Big Oil, and all the unseemly aspects that come with it, the town itself plays as important a role in the events of Tin Star as any of its denizens.

In reality, the fictional Little Big Bear is set in High River, a rural town about 54km south of downtown Calgary. With a population of just 13,584, it had all the picturesque, small-town charm that Tin Star’s producers wanted.

However, while the Rocky Mountains are visible from High River, it is actually situated in the Prairies and doesn’t have the imposing landscape the producers had.

Meanwhile, 200km to the south on the outskirts of Glacier National Park lies the tiny town of Waterton. Situated in a basin and surrounded by snow-capped mountains, it’s a place dominated by nature. The landscape was perfect for the show, but the town did not have the infrastructure to support the 250 people required for filming.

So it was down to the hard-working and talented VFX crew at The Flying Colour Company to shoot the mountains at Waterton and then superimpose them seamlessly to the town of High River in post-production. In short, Tin Star really is a series that moves mountains.

“High River itself was perfect because most of it was built between 1930 and 1979, so it has a feeling of a town preserved in aspic. You’re reminded as you walk around of the iconic small towns of films from A History of Violence through to Fargo. It has little cinemas, a small Chinese takeaway, it has red brick banks, its streets are perfectly clean and well manicured. It has a funeral home you couldn’t have drawn more succinctly or poignantly in a comic book.

“It has the feel of a Western town because that’s what it was – it was a town established by cowmen and ranchers.”

“Little Big Bear is definitely one of the main characters in the show. In fact, it’s the first sort of presence that you feel and having the big city and all these new things coming in and sort of infiltrating – you feel this beautiful space getting trampled on.”

“I don’t believe Tin Star could be set anywhere else. It has an incredibly cinematic landscape. It’s a landscape that looked at one way can feel beautiful and welcoming and relaxing but that in another light can feel menacing, lonely and confrontational.

“The people of High River were incredibly welcoming and we basically took the town over and rebuilt it. Canadians have a real pioneering spirit and that’s reflected in the show.”

“High River is the weirdest place ever, it’s like a model town. I sort of forget that people live there. It was such a privilege to be able to shoot on those locations because I know it’s hard to get them. I’ve never seen anything like it. I think that’s going to add to Tin Star and what we can bring.”

“You have the interesting mix, the Anglo-Canadian set here in Canada. You get a lot of the cast that are predominantly British, and it’s interesting having British characters set against this beautiful scenery of mountains, the Rockies, oil refineries, what have you, so the merging of those two cultures is interesting.”

“The issues that we deal with – the oil industry and the town, the aboriginal people and the community – affect everybody deeply. Whether it’s environmentally or socially, this series really touches on that and it delves into what some of those issues are. It brings to light a lot things we don’t really see a lot in television.”