Fed Square isn't really the Sydney Opera House of Melbourne, hey.

Ah, Melbourne. You know, “the New York to Sydney’s Los Angeles”. Or at least that’s what US critics covering the final season of The Leftovers are telling us. The terminally kooky doomsday drama, which airs on HBO (and on Foxtel in Australia) has moved its final season to Melbourne, Australia, which means we get to read all about what the Americans really think of us Down Under.

The Leftovers takes place in a world where 2 percent of the population has vanished (in what appears to be a kind of rapture), and it’s about as weird as TV gets tbh. It centres on a small-town cop, Kevin (Justin Theroux) and his family in the aftermath of the rapture, as Kevin transforms from dog-shooting cop into Christ-like hero. (By the by, Justin Theroux is ripped as.) The series was created by Lost alum Damon Lindelof, and is in its final run of episodes after just two previous brilliant seasons.

Our home girt by sea appears to have been a longtime obsession of Lindelof, who has referenced Australia in every previous season of the show (including performances by American actors with some truly heinous Australian accents). This means US critics are falling over themselves to praise Melbourne’s “landmark locations” in the most recent episode, ‘G’Day Melbourne’.

First things first, ‘G’Day Melbourne’ refers to a fictional breakfast show on which Kevin (Justin Theroux) finds himself, among a hoard of viewers camping outside the studio windows, waving signs saying things all normal people would put on a poster, like “Melbourne Rocks! *peace sign*”.

The studios for ‘G’Day Melbourne’ were filmed at Federation Square — Melbourne’s free social hub in the centre of the city, and visage which is absolutely hated by all proper local residents. Now, if you’re the kind of Melbournian who hates being constantly compared to Sydney, strap in for Vulture’s description of Fed Square: “Sydney has its Harbour Bridge and Opera House, and Melbourne has this post-modern riverside mashup.”

Really makes you think: what are Melbourne’s iconic landmarks? If Fed Square is our Opera House, Melbourne may as well just give up.

Beyond the glass walls of the ‘G’Day Melbourne’ studio, Theroux finds himself jogging down Melbourne’s (actually) iconic graffiti-ed laneways. Variety describes Melbourne’s much-photographed Hosier Lane as ” maze of graffiti-covered walls”, i.e. the perfect place for any Melbourne visitor to “pursue a memory/vision/ghost/hallucination”, as Theroux’s Kevin does.

Alistair Rielly, The Leftovers‘ Australian location scout, described the experience of shooting in Melbourne around those pesky street artists to Vulture. “We’ve got the street locked down and pieces of equipment there,” Rielly explained, “and we took our eyes off it for ten minutes and we came back and we actually had our own graffiti tagged.” Oh, Melbourne, you artsy wanker!

Side note: the building opposite my balcony is tagged with graffiti from local North Melbournians. Should I begin leasing my balcony to international film crews?

The episode has some brilliant oddities, like Nora’s (Carrie Coon) reluctance to let Kevin carry $10k into Australia through customs, preferring to duct tape it to her stomach (totally logical). I guess Nora saw the now-infamous Johnny Depp-Amber Heard customs apology video, and thought twice about crossing Border Force.

But perhaps the oddest part was watching incredibly American actors, in an intractably American show, cavorting around the city I just trammed through an hour ago, and finding sacred books in the library where I pretended to study during uni.

Not like Kevin could've asked an actual person about where to find the library. A koala will do just fine. #TheLeftovers — Omari Daniels (@TheOtherBigO) May 8, 2017

Still, with more and more international companies choosing to film in Australia (where they get pretty decent tax cuts etc. from our government), I’m guessing this isn’t the last time we’ll see Melbourne’s “iconic landmarks” in a US show.