That's pretty much what Riddell Productions made our name on. Yes, it does seem as if Paul's house is a set, but it was actually Manny's real apartment in Eastbourne.
Emanuel is more of a classical music buff than a musicals buff. Rachel's flat was actually two houses; three if you count the exterior. Persephone was the production designer for Portrait of a Knight and the lounge is her parents house in Newlands. Rachel's room was a downstairs flat in Kelburn that my friend Joel lived in - possibly Amber as well - while the exterior was a nicer house in Kelburn that we randomly filmed on the pick-up day where we did all the exterior shots of buildings. - Rachel's job: the exterior is the National Library, which is in Thorndon, but the interior is Wellington City Archives, which is near the Basin Reserve. That graphic match before The Knight on my Couch wasn't intentional, but it totally makes it believable. We had zero input into the art that was hanging on the walls of the gallery. That was a show containing random stuff by all their members. We got to take a painting down in order to show the Knight one, which backfired slightly when someone was keen to buy Jutta's painting! Yes, we filmed while the gallery was open, but it was pretty sparsely populated. - Bad Man was shot all over Wellington. Our 104 Wallace Street flat featured in a skit about suicide that was cut. The Nazi stuff was shot at Wrights Hill Fortress. https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/7543/Wrights%20Hill%20Fortress
That's an open challenge to the kids and the wannabe film directors.