Historic Sparks railroad building serves as the backdrop for new TV series

SPARKS, Nev. (KOLO) – After six months in the works, a new dystopian drama is coming to a major streaming platform. The best part? It’s being filmed at the oldest building in Sparks, Nevada.

Alissa Knight, alongside her wife Melissa, serves as the director and executive producer of a new TV series called ‘Shadow Unit.’ The series centers around protagonist Isabella Kane, a former head of a notorious ransomware group. Kane finds herself forced into a bargain with the FBI. Trapped in a high-stakes game of cyber warfare and redemption, she leads a team of misfit ex-hackers on a mission to dismantle the world’s most dangerous cyber crime syndicates, while uncovering corruption within the very agency she’s forced to serve. It sounds like fantasy but the series is actually based off Alissa’s life. Melissa, who’s a co-writer on the show, says being so close to this story actually makes the writing easier.

“Alissa and I truly believe on making things pretty real versus things you’ve seen in other shows that are fluffy, so to speak. So, I like that we are putting our practitioner hat on and writing it into the script,” Melissa said.

The crew for this production consists of 23 people including some locals like Sparks native, Andrew Arguello, who actually scouted the historic machine shop building himself.

“This location came to my radar thanks to Donald Abbott who’s a councilman here in Sparks. He posted on Facebook about this location and how they were tearing it down. I reached out to tell him it was perfect for a crime drama series that I was filming. We toured it, obviously it was stunning, and had such rich history that obviously it was a no brainer to film here,” Arguello said.

When Alissa saw it, she couldn’t have agreed more.

“There’s a lot of production value here. You just cant make stuff like this in virtual production,” said Alissa.

You may recall previous reporting KOLO has done about the 120-year-old building being in danger of getting torn down. The production crew hopes that their series can build renewed interest in saving a piece of history.

“Us Nevadans, we care deeply for it,” said Arguello.

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