The opening shot of Canberra in The Code would have had Ian Hill and his tourism marketing team at VisitCanberra cheering.
The closing scene, not so much.
For its establishing shot of the capital, the ABC's sleek and savvy new techno thriller - already sold to the BBC and US cable TV, as well as broadcasters in Denmark and Latin America - panned its camera high over a sun-sparkled, inexplicably blue Lake Burley Griffin, across Commonwealth Avenue bridge and past the National Library and the lush Parliamentary Triangle towards Parliament House.
As tourist-bait goes, this was no Human Brochure - it was a Brochure Brochure.
And yet, by the end of the first hour of the six-part conspiracy, computer hacker Jesse Banks (played by Ashley Zukerman) was being abducted from a suburban street under that same spectacularly beautiful Canberra sky.
People dragged kicking and screaming into unmarked vans? That never happens in Canberra, right? Not unless it's an ACT Liberals preselection.
You have to admit The Code wastes no time making Canberra look pretty darn sexy, from the opening titles showing time-lapse-enhanced headlights blurring along Parkes Way to the frequent scene-setting shots of clouds rolling over Parliament House and other time-lapse-enhanced views of the city.
OK, so there's more than a hint of the opening titles of the Washington-set House of Cards in those bursts of time-lapse photography used by director Shawn Seet.
But it's a slick effect that lends an irresistible lustre to series creator Shelley Birse's tantalising suggestion of something dark and dangerous lurking just beneath the surface of the national city.
THE STORY SO FAR
Press gallery journo Ned Banks (played by Dan Spielman) and his unstable hacker brother Jesse are in peril after posting online a chilling phone video of two teens caught in a suspicious road accident near the outback town of Lindara.
A truck involved in the crash is registered to the Canberra-based biotech company Physanto, which detects Jesse hacking into its database and rifling through its encrypted files.
Deputy PM Ian Bradley (David Wenham) orders his media minders to give Ned the "drop" on explosive evidence of a cabinet minister's sexual indiscretion.
What is the deputy PM's agenda? What deadly secret has Jesse's hacking uncovered? And since when did Xena the Warrior Princess (Lucy Lawless) start teaching indigenous schoolkids in the outback?
THAT'S SO CANBERRA. OR NOT.
The swearing-in ceremony: It's just gone 8.30pm on the ABC, so of course there will be 'F' words. But what do you expect? We're in the Prime Minister's office. Meet Aden Young, playing the PM's chief of staff and No. 1 "javelin catcher" Randall Keats. He is threatening vivisection for the "f---knuckle" responsible for the PM's latest Tweets. Turns out the PM is doing them himself. Ouch! That stings. Like a shaving cut.
The best car-parking spot ever: Only in TV land can you can drive straight up to the front of the Parliament House forecourt in your battered bomb of a Peugeot and find a parking spot. Like, right out front.
Tell your porkie walking: Watch through the glass-walled walkways as Capital Hill's political minders and spinners do the West Wing-style walk and talk, complete with swaying lanyards. Oh, yes, there be lanyards.
Who's that in the media pack: No sign of Mark Riley or Latika Bourke or Fran Kelly in that scrum of microphones and cameras in the Parliament House corridor. How odd, though, to see Josh's dad from Please Like Me firing in a question to the minister.
The Canberra Times cameo: There's nothing like a screaming headline under a real newspaper masthead to lend authenticity to a ministerial sex scandal.
UPDATES FROM CANBERRA VIEWERS...
Sorry, you can't park that van here: An eagle-eyed CT reader/ABC viewer - clearly someone with a passion for lakeside regulations - points out that the National Capital Authority would NEVER have allowed a kebab van -- where hacker Jesse works -- to park under the Kings Avenue Bridge. Notes our spy: "If the hipster red Brodburger van with its gourmet fare couldn't survive 500metres away from a bridge, there's NO WAY a beaten up kebaber would last 10mins parked there. Might as well be a truck bomb!"
Credits where credits are due: A canberratimes.com.au reader, who describes Episode 1 of The Code as having "enough to keep my wife and I engaged as well as, perhaps surprisingly, our 16-year-old son", was puzzled to read at the end of the closing credits that the show was "filmed and post-produced in New South Wales Australia". That would explain the Broken Hill sequences, but why isn't the filming in ACT locations referenced also? Especially when the ACT government and ScreenACT get top billing after the ABC in the opening credits, and when the closing credits acknowledge that The Code was "financed in association with the ACT government and ScreenACT". "Picky?," wonders our correspondent. "Yeah, probably, but for locals and the ACT Government I guess that matters!"
The Code continues 8.30pm Sunday September 28 on ABC.
