Villefranche is a border city but the location of the fictitious town is never revealed.
A black spot describes an area with little to no mobile reception, often due to its remote location. Interestingly, the French expression for such an area and the original title of the series is Zone Blanche, which literally translates to white spot.
This was filmed in the Vosges Mountains in Eastern France, just a few kilometers to the west of the fabled Black Forest in Germany.
Black Spot refers both to an electronic "dead zone" and a literary device first popularized in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, where a mark is given to one who is guilty, linking the person to the injustice done.
In the secondary meaning, the guilt is not necessarily one of crimes against the nation, but rather crimes against their comrades, breaking a common code.
This is a common motif in the show and several marks exist to point guilt at guilty parties, not always for criminal activities, but more commonly crimes against "the forest".
This is a common motif in the show and several marks exist to point guilt at guilty parties, not always for criminal activities, but more commonly crimes against "the forest".
The original title of the show is "Zone Blanche" which translates in French as both a white zone and a blank zone. Blanche here seems to be representative of blank such as the forest being a blank cell zone area. The English or US title is "Black Spot" which in French would translate as "Zone (or tâche) Noire" but would really have little or nothing to do with the point of the show. It remains a mystery why Netflix didn't just translate the name correctly and call the show "Blank Spot".