Did you see some familiar faces from the central west on TV this week?
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The third and final season of award-winning ABC drama Total Control premiered on Sunday night and the town of Trangie was among the stars.
The episode sees the show's lead senator Alex Irving - played by Bidjara actress Deborah Mailman - visit a town in rural Queensland in the wake of the "worst flood in a century".
But in a bit of TV magic, the scenes in the flood-damaged town are actually filmed in Trangie, NSW.
Between May and June, 2023, the team behind Total Control visited Trangie to film for the episode, which begins two years after the events of the show's second season.
In scenes that would be familiar to many in the central west after the devastating flooding of 2022, flood-damaged furniture and household items could be seen piled up outside houses on one of Trangie's residential streets.
The iconic hall at the Trangie Racecourse and Showground also transformed into an evacuation centre for frustrated locals.
Sharing the screen with series lead Deborah Mailman and Indigenous comedian Steph Tisdell are a whole lot of extras recruited from across the western plains and central west.
Phil Steer, one of the extras who appeared in the episode, said the experience was "a blast".
"Very odd to see our own faces and places on telly though," he said.
While Trangie stood in for rural Queensland this season, other scenes were shot on-location.
In July, the production took over parliament house in Canberra to shoot for the series.
When the show's fictional speaker of the house Phillipa Bailey appeared in her office, she was actually sitting in the real speaker Milton Dick's office.
When shots were filmed outside of the prime minister's office, they had to work around Anthony Albanese's press conference announcing Michele Bullock as the Reserve Bank Governor.
Total Control follows reluctant politician Alex Irving on her rise to power. Now completely at home in the nation's capital, she's holding the government on a short leash, but it's taking a toll.
New episodes of Total Control air on ABC TV and on ABC iView at 8:30pm Sundays.
