Behind the making of Wicked City

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The new ABC-TV series has got a great title that really fits the time and place. I came of age back then as a reporter in Los Angeles, working just a few blocks from where this series is shot. Hollywood may have had a glamorous past, but it was too dangerous to live there in the 1980's.

The title for the new series is no exaggeration! Los Angeles in the 80s was a wicked city.

"There's neon lights and billboards and clubs, and it just feels so fun - even though there's a seedy underbelly to it," Taissa Farmiga said.

Farmiga's character is covering it as a reporter.

Detectives played by Jeremy Sisto and Gabriel Luna are trying to make sense of the underworld.

"It was the serial killer capitol of the world. There was serial killers coming from all over the world just like there were artists and other ambitious people," Sisto said.

Ed Westwick, who previously starred on Gossip Girls, plays a creepy serial killer opposite Erika Christenson as his companion, a nurse.

"He knows how to manipulate. He knows what people want to hear and for someone if Barbara's position, who is perhaps looking for that, she falls for him," Westwick said.

'Barbara' is more like 'Bonnie' to his 'Clyde'. Their drama? Just one of many on these mean streets.

"It was probably easier to get cocaine than it was to get a cab on the Sunset Strip," Erika Christensen said.

Today Hollywood is a tourist mecca in much the same way times square went from seedy to safe a quarter century ago. This new series captures the bad old days I remember.

"Wicked City" premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. right before Eyewitness News at 11 on ABC 7!