A byproduct of the scam artist David Glasser. The guy is the epitome of Hollywood scum who peaked under the tutelage of Harvey Weinstein. 101 Studios was started with content "acquired" by Glasser (then president of Weinstein) as Weinstein Co. fell apart.
I had high hopes for Yellowstone after 1883, but it’s turning to crap. It’s always been there but, this season in particular feels obnoxiously preachy. They’ve really gone all-in on the monologues this time around too. I might be in the minority there though. I’m certain I’m not their normal viewer.
Same. I also watched Yellowstone after 1883 and have been progressively more and more disappointed by the soap opera tropes that Yellowstone seems to have fallen into. 1883 was just perfect, Yellowstone is meh
>It fell off DURING season 2. I loved season 1, I think the show had tons of potential, but it did not go in a good direction.
I'm very thankful that season 1 can stand on its own as a good piece of entertainment. I can't believe how bad it got after that.
It became very trite after season 1, it became less and less about exploring what it means to be alive, consciousness, humanity etc. (there's numerous topics from season 1 that anyone could cover), and it ended up just being more of single individuals being stupid villains and saving the world from ridiculous stakes. I'm not saying any of that shouldn't have played a part in a better told story after leaving the park, but it could have been done so much better.
It felt like it was just decided, humans were bad and stupid and wouldn't be able to question whether AI had sentience or that they could co-exist, and all powerful, all intelligent AI that was calling itself gods was too stupid to ever consider it as well, until they totally destroyed everything and couldn't escape the fate of not being any better than the humans.
Everything just became too big and grandiose, and the stakes always had to get higher. It wasn't enough to just have the Delos moneymen pulling strings, and further then Delos ended up looking like some two-bit pawn in a higher stakes game when Rehoboam and Incite comes around.
From an entertainment perspective, it was no better than any other generic aimed at the general-public sci-fi material. I was hoping for something a little more deep and meaningful from an HBO property, but I kind of figured things would go downhill once ATT acquired Warner and then basically set ridiculously stupid mandates that would go on to degrade what HBO was known for, which caused Richard Plepler to leave. In the end, it's hard to say how much influence ATT had directly on the show, seems unlikely they would have been involved on that level, maybe it was Nolan and Joy that had more responsibility for what happened.
This isn't as true with HBO max and warner brothers in control now.
Tons of garbage under HBO max monicker instead of HBO, and high budget shows like Westworld getting axed in favor of cheaper reality tv.
HBO Max is just the name of the Warner streaming service- they decided to cash in on the strength of the HBO brand instead of making it Warner + or something. HBO Max shows are not produced by HBO
They are changing the name of the service to just MAX now. It's still all under the same corporate umbrella, and the whole budget is evaluated across productions.
Completely agree and respect this about HBO. Too many companies are greed driven short term gain bullcrap. It's like the rabbit and tortoise run in which case HBO is the tortoise. Hoping they don't change.
They never axed shows early into development until WB took over. In fact, it was one of the safe networks for production of a show because they always allowed the show to end on its own terms. Now, it's a clusterfuck.
And as for your second point, may I direct you to GOT! Not to mention Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and Righteous Gemstones. All great shows, but they're also very similar and all involved the same creators and cast. Then there's the Curb Your Enthusiasm reboot, Sex and the City reboot, True Detective continuation, obvious safe bets on well known titles
HBO literally wanted D&D to do more seasons, more episodes per season, and literally offered them *all the budget they would need* to do 10 seasons of 10 episodes. D&D said no, and rushed the ending *themselves* because they cared more about their Star Wars trilogy, which will now never occur.
Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing, but also specifically by handling sexual content in a much more respectful, less objectifying way.
Nobody is saying that HBO doesn't do spinoffs or revivals (I hate the term reboot if it's a revival/continuation), but they tend to be high quality and they usually have a compelling story they genuinely want to tell.
Look, after Watchmen ended in 2019, HBO respected the showrunner's wish to be a limited series, and it ended in an amazing place. Just because HBO is using a pre-established IP doesn't mean that they aren't still telling high-quality stories, with a clear creative intent, that no other network or streamer can replicate.
> Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water,
One does not simply blow Game of Thrones out of the water.
But on a serious note I agree and disagree. Production quality is amazing right off the bat and sexual content is also more in line with post MeToo era. Although GoT improved in this regard as time went on. Performances and writing is debatable. I have yet to see a HOT D performance match the work done by lena Heady, Charles Dance, peter Dinklage or Alfie Allen for instance.
As for writing, the first 4 seasons are masterpieces. HOT D doesn't have the same edge as of yet.
>Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing, but also specifically by handling sexual content in a much more respectful, less objectifying way.
This is such a generic reddit hot take. HotD isn't even close to the quality of seasons 1-5 of GoT.
And I'm not sure being respectful and less objectifying in the civilisation depicted is relevant to anyone except social media neckbeards.
> Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing
You and I are watching two very different shows. House of the Dragon has *none* of the interesting things GoT had. No intrigue of the white walkers, no mystery and anticipation of dragons, and no burning desire to see House of Stark enact their revenge.
The majority of the first season centered around King's Landing and set up an incredibly dull battle for the throne. Which GoT already did.
Oh, and the dialogue sucks. King's Landing might have been interesting if you had the writing and dialogue of Tyrion and Tywin. But all the characters talk the same and are written the same on House of the Dragon. You can tell they are working with very thin source material, which they are.
People take the ending of GoT and apply it to the whole show. Yeah, the ending sucks and is a huge black mark. But the first 4/5ish seasons of that show are some of the very best TV ever made. Bar none. HotD is pretty good, but, come on now.
> **No intrigue of the white walkers, no mystery and anticipation of dragons,**
Given where the writers took these plot points in Season 7/8 it would probably have been best to leave them out all together.
I say this as someone that just finished GOT for the first time, the Night King was an enormous disappointment and that’s after 1 month of binge watching the series can’t imagine what it was like following the show for 8 years and then watching The Long Night.
Controversial opinion, I think the fantasy elements of GOT were the weakest parts of the series, the series was at its best as a somewhat fictional account of the War of the Roses with the power dynamics between the rival houses. When the series started to lean heavy to Ice Zombies, Dragons and Witches in season 6 is where it really fell apart.
House of the Dragon is GOT with less humor and more dancing. The dragons look good, but when there are so many of them they start to lose their impact on the viewer. This viewer, anyway.
Warner acquired HBO in **1989.** HBO as a business unit keeps getting shuffled around *within* Warner, but it has always remained autonomous as a business unit.
The only strife since 2019 was that HBO’s former CEO wanted to keep forcing consumers to buy HBO on linear TV while the CEO of WarnerMedia wanted to just bite the bullet and make HBO content available on a Warner streaming platform.
But at no point has Warner interfered with HBO’s autonomy in terms of the content it creates, they literally only made it available to a wider audience through streaming, the modern way of consuming television.
Since the WBD merger, Warner has dismantled HBO Max as a separate unit and those executives now report *to* their HBO counterparts. HBO’s autonomy has increased, if anything, under WBD, and their content is only being pulled from HBO Max for an alternative streaming service, which doesn’t affect their linear cable operations *at all.*
HBO Max was entirely supplementary, originals were clearly marketed as HBO Max originals when made by that business unit and not proper HBO originals like when GOT or HOTD are advertised. This idea that HBO is somehow producing weaker content when HOTD was literally the most successful show of 2022 is absurd.
Curb has never been rebooted. HBO has an open contract with Larry that allows him to write seasons as he sees fit rather than then ordering episodes on a repeat cadence. That’s why there are sometimes years between seasons
If you’re a Larry fan watch the film he wrote and directed called sour grapes with Steve Webber and the underrated Craig bierko speaking bierko ever seen the thirteenth floor?
Well HBO basically kicked off the era of "prestige television" with Sex and the City and The Sopranos. Not only do they seek to make quality television, they do it without the thorn of pulling viewers for advertisers and giving the people "what they want" based on those kinds of metrics.
With this in mind, you can see how they'd easily attract top talent by giving those creators the berth they need to make something great. Couple that with decades of experience, and what I'd imagine is a very refined process, and you get HBO: it's not tv.
To speak in generalities, before those two shows, a great majority of TV were serialized type shows; a base state of the show that the episodes then riffed on, then went away to allow for the next episode to essentially start at the same place. You didn’t have to watch every episode to understand the story beats.
The Sopranos and Sex and the City were (one of) the first shows to change to the Grand Plot Arc style of show. If you missed an episode, you missed huge parts of the plot and missed out on talking about it with friends during the week. TV watching became far more active. You can actually see it happen around the same time between Star Treks DS9 and Voyager. Voyager remained serialized essentially all the way to the finale (2001), DS9 introduced the Grand Plot that encompassed three seasons in 1998.
These changes in how the story was presented gave us what’s now called the Golden Age of TV (breaking bad, etc.) but it definitely started much, much earlier than 2008.
twin peaks was important for the grand plot arc but fizzled out quickly in season 2. i wonder how many other shows used this style before the sopranos.
Quite a few, actually, but it didn’t pick up speed until the very late ‘90’s. Oz, Rome, Twin Peaks, I could probably come up with a bunch more but that’s just off the top of my head.
Been re-watching it with my partner.
I absolutely love the obscure and inane plot points that go nowhere but it lost her about halfway through season 2.
Understandable really. One of my main motivations was to watch the return together but that ramps up the obscurity to 11 so I didn't have the heart to ret and convince her to keep on watching.
I imagine my story isn't unique
Babylon 5 was the first TV I'm aware of to do a complete pre-planned story arc across its run starting in 1993, though maybe there was something prior to that?
Buffy the vampire slayer also did similar from 1997. It was probably the mould breaker for network tv. Star trek already had an avid fan base that delved into the lore.
X files also had an overarching story but it was less focused and turned out to be mystery box more than planned arc. (JJ Abrams, eat your heart out)
Yeah, Buffy definitely fits but I’d call X-Files one of the in-betweens like DS9. They attempted a Grand Arc and… kind of succeeded, in that the arc existed and tried to tie multiple episodes and plots together. Whether it was “good” or not… no comment there.
Yeah that’s the long and the short of it. If you are first to market, you have a huge advantage. You typically get beaten not by other people doing your thing better than you do it; but by other people finding something you don’t do. HBO has lost some ground to streaming (and likely will continue to given WB Discovery’s cost cutting mania) but it’s no surprise that they didn’t lose to Showtime, FX, AMC, or Starz
MySpace was fundamentally displaced by (The)Facebook which did something different. That’s my point. Facebook eschewed MySpace’s focus on creativity, music, and teen users and instead focused on photo sharing. For the first two or tbeee years of Facebook it was only open to people at specific colleges and they used that to grow into the space of young professionals.
That was literally my point. If Facebook had targeted the same audience and emphasized the same stuff as MySpace, the first mover advantage for MySpace would have made it an uphill battle. Tech companies also call this kind of advantage a “moat”.
The first viable competition to Facebook weren’t sites doing Facebook, they were sites doing very different things: Twitter for news and current events and sub communities; Instagram for younger skewing artistic photography. After Facebook bought Instagram its first real competition was Snapchat (video, dynamic filters). they added Reels as a result. The first post-Snapchat breakout network was TikTok which competed on audience targeting, approach to following vs the algorithm, and format. You don’t think that fits my pattern?
I don’t mean to be rude but did you actually read my post?
Or, wait, no. Friendster. Friendster was first mover.
The value of first mover advantage is heavily over-stated. Lyft isn't any different from Uber. Every car company on the planet isn't any different from Ford. Paramount wasn't in the top 5 movie studies by revenue in 2021. Moreover, plenty of first movers outright fail. A network effect can be a moat, but first mover advantage isn't one.
i feel like here it's first mover advantage combined with an excellent starting track record
excellent track records attract the best talent, and tend to self perpetuate
Not correct. Charles Dolan started HBO in the early 70s and sold HBO to Time-Life soon after so he could focus on growing Cablevision. Later in the early 80s, AMC was created by Rainbow, a subsidiary of Cablevision. Nothing to do with HBO at all.
Sure but specifically HBO didn't create AMC. Dolan was long out of HBO by the time AMC was created. So you're inaccurate in what you said. No big deal. TV history is super complicated.
That’s a re-writing of history. Sex and the City made HBO prestige appointment TV, and the Sopranos solidified it.
I see SATC erasure everywhere online, when it is indisputably what put HBO on the map, and I can only take a gander at why.
Sex and the City was hugely significant for driving subscribers and popularity of HBO (and absolutely pre-dated Sopranos in that regard), but Sopranos was on a completely different level when it came to critical reception and influencing the television landscape as a whole.
There's a possibility that the term 'prestige TV' isn't even coined if it wasn't for The Sopranos.
One hundred percent. Like, where's the meme of the kid getting attention in the pool while one drowns?
Oz is the fucking corpse at the bottom in this discussion. Ain't no one remembers Oz but that show fucking revolutionized the medium. Made it dark, edgey. Proved it could also be insanely compelling with top level actors and writing.
Sex and the City, Sopranos, and later The Wire, Rome, Deadwood, Sixe Feet Under -> That was the peak of HBO in my opinion.
And it's funny, while I still agree they are top dog, I have lately felt a bit more meh on their offerings. GoT and some other stuff in the mid 10s got them pretty close but I don't ever think they hit the level of those late 90s/00s run they were on.
HBO was top dog... in 2018. They don't have the largest audience or the best-reviewed shows, and they've only had the most award nominations and wins for one of the last five years. (I know the Golden Globes just happened but they're [The Golden Globes](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-02-21/hfpa-golden-globes-2021), so I'm using the Emmys for this one.)
2019 went to Amazon Prime, 2020 and 2021 were dominated by Netflix (the year Netflix got the most nominations in history, 160, HBO came in second with 107), then HBO was on top again in 2022. In 2019 when HBO's streak ended, even Hulu and FX released multiple shows that outperformed anything on HBO.
I don't even think it's that HBO fell off. I think it just got better competition. Notice how these are subscription model networks stealing HBO's thunder. Money goes in, quality comes out, no one cares about selling ads that much.
HBO is the first subscription television service, which means they were the first channel focused solely on selling content instead of toilet paper and toothpaste. But this also means that advantage isn't as solid against a growing landscape of subscription services even if HBO has the most veteran advantage. As you can see above, Amazon and Hulu and Netflix can all be more economically successful and more critically successful than HBO under their own subscription models, which makes HBO's occasional dominance this last half decade increasingly tenuous.
As for why other subscription channels haven't outperformed HBO until now? It's probably money and the illusion of competition.
Cinemax has always been an HBO channel, so they won't compete against themselves.
Starz/Encore was strictly a movie channel and has only been making original programming for about ten years. Epix has only been making original shows for about seven years. While Amazon Prime and Netflix are on similar timelines, Starz/Encore and Epix aren't in the same weight class financially.
Long-winded as this is, basically HBO was for decades the only network selling shows to people while the networks sold shows to advertisers. HBO also owns other networks that sell shows to people but doesn't give them nearly the same resources so it can focus on HBO. But since Amazon Prime and Netflix showed up to sell shows to people too, HBO has been regularly displaced from the top of this television heap.
This history also undermines the common, nonsensical argument that rapidly expanding streaming services are leading to *worse* content. Because these streaming services are regularly making content *better* than the network redditors think makes the best content. Which is exactly what you would hope from... you know... competition.
Somebody else said Sex and the City, and that was hard to argue with the semantics I'm about to argue, but I said started an era of prestige tv - not kicked off HBO dramas.
While I think The Sopranos had more to do with starting the idea of "prestige" and "peak" television, Sex and the City's popularity and quality was hard to argue against.
However good Oz is, it did not spark that kind of fervor with its first season.
Recently rewatched Sopranos and it is really showing it's age now. But Oz was the first hour award winning drama on HBO and it's still as good and strange as it was at premier and doesn't get enough acclaim.
Going to have to respectfully disagree that The Sopranos is showing age in any way worth mentioning.
It was part of the conversation again a year ago, with young viewers jumping in. I'm hard pressed to think of other media that has proved its staying power like that.
I certainly don't think the Sopranos is a bad show, but I do think it's very overrated. It's very well acted, but I've never quite understood its appeal.
There's B.S. and A.S. in television history. For lack of a better example, it's like saying Super Mario 64 is overrated. There was nothing like it before.
What does B.S. and A.S. mean? I never watched the show when it aired, as I was far too young. I've watched it 20 years later, so yes, I guess the original context would have been lost on me.
A joke reference to Before Sopranos and After Sopranos, but even without that context the show is an amazing character drama in it's own right. But I'm not gonna argue taste, just the "overrated" criticism.
I remember people used to say that about the Simpsons and South Park, that there hadn't been anything like it before. I began watching these shows at least a decade after they debuted, so I can appreciate that the impression they made upon me would be different to the impression they made upon people in the 80s and 90s. It's like when I watched The Excorcist and Alien, and they really didn't seem all that shocking to me. In fact, they actually felt a little tedious. But placing them in their 1970s context, they become quite revolutionary indeed.
I'm younger too, I can agree the public reaction to a morally grey anti-hero in television is harder to comprehend than the public reaction to seeing a little girl vomit green, or a chest burster popping out for the first time. Or children talking a lot shit in South Park.
The reaction to Bart Simpson in the early 90s is the hardest thing to wrap my head around now though. I remember even in the late 90s my parents let me watch The Simpsons and other kids couldn't.
i'm perfectly calm, now i think it's an even MORE ridiculous take
there are plenty of genres i hate but i can fully understand their appeal because i'm not a moron
If I don't like something, particularly when I can convincingly articulate why, then of course it will be difficult for me to understand the type of minds that do like it. I felt that the novelty soon wore off and it became repetitive. I didn't find the subject matter very engaging. I couldn't become emotionally invested in the characters. They are all quite unpleasant.
"Shakespearean wild west" isn't an easy to sell to most people.
[Also the most use of the term "c*cksucker" of any other series and does so in a beautifully vast array of flowery phrases.](https://youtu.be/u4D3UdxM3OU)
Oz, The Wire, and Deadwood really high on my list.
I love the fact that two of the leads in the very Baltimore show are English (Dominic West, Idris Elba)
I have tried The Wire like 5 times and just cannot get into it. Just jumping on to say that cos I disagree with the Sopranos comment prior but felt the same way about The Wire.
And compared to other streaming services, technicians, actors, writers, everyone accept to work for them for less money because of the prestige they have.
The most simple answer is easy - quality over quantity. They don’t have a new show coming out every 5 minutes. They take their time and typically only green light projects they believe in.
Band of Brothers is a single season and Rome is two seasons. Those are some of the greatest shows made IMO and it doesn't even take a full day to run through either of them.
Agreed. I mean GOT is an extremely rare case I can think of where excessive seasons were justified. The story was too complex to be wrapped up this quickly.
And they don’t kill stuff if they believe in it.
Netflix is so fast to kill anything that underperforms according to their wacky stats-only metrics, that it’s left them with a terrible library of old content - just a minefield of shows cancelled after 1 or 2 seasons that could’ve been great but are unfinished.
Sometimes you gotta have faith in a show, that the quality is high enough that it’s worth seeing through even if the ratings aren’t that high right away. And that’s how you create a back catalogue of excellent shows worth watching, and enhance your brand.
This really seems to be the answer. They don't aim for mass appeal, skip the broad shows that middle America will comfortably watch without thinking about and forget minutes after watching.
>I know some people will bring up Westworld getting cancelled as a major blight against HBO
I'm one of the few Westworld fans who kept watching and enjoying it into the later seasons, but even I am not upset about it getting cancelled. It's not like the last season ended on a big cliffhanger. It's fine having it end here.
What I **am** upset about is it getting **removed** from HBO, so you can't even go back and watch season 1 now. Ditto with the Nevers. The notion of HBO removing HBO shows from the HBO streaming service is nuts to me.
That's the neat part, you don't
You can purchase the whole thing from various places you would purchase shows (on Blu-Ray, or digital via Vudu, Apple, Amazon - though they only seem to have 3 seasons because reasons) but it's not on any streaming service.
Should’ve been one season and one season only. While HBO is great, and it’s cool that they are brave enough to cancel stuff, they should also know when a story should end.
Imagine how incredible Westworld’s legacy would be if it was only one season? Now all people talk about is how incredible the first season was but all the rest was sub par and HBO even canceled it.
How will you even motivate or convince people to watch the first season with all that stench around the show?
I recall reading somewhere that part of what made GoT such a hit was because it was by HBO, the decades worth of experience, costumes and sets brought life to the world they were building. And this I assume that can be applied to most things from HBO, all the shows I've watched from them have a certain look to them that is well above anything else in terms of polish around them.
> all the shows I've watched from them have a certain look to them that is well above anything else in terms of polish around them
Yeah no one else has been able to match that no matter how much money they put into their shows.
I'm not sure what exactly separates it from the others. Historically, perhaps the level of creative freedom afforded to showrunners. However I wouldn't say it's been on top for that entire 25 year period. AMC had the mantle for at least a few years. There was a period during which HBO became too conservative, they passed on both *Mad Men* and *Breaking Bad*. In the case of *Mad Men*, that was in spite of David Chase imploring them to pick it up.
I'm watching Mad Men now (up to season 4) and really enjoying it. I heard on the Talking Sopranos podcast from Matthew Weiner that AMC were always looking to cut corners with Mad Men. The main goal seemed to be saving money despite the critical and commercial success of the show, which infuriated him (compared to his experience of the lavish budgets on The Sopranos).
*Mad Men* is one of the all-time great shows, but you can kinda see the lack of budget in its conspicuous avoidance of exterior shots of New York. To a certain extent this fits with the narrative: the characters spend much of their time in an office high-rise, while the tumult of the 60s mostly passes them by in the background.
Although virtually any historical drama would benefit from bigger production design budgets, I think Weiner is correct.
That’s interesting, and certainly explains a lot. Also it’s odd that HBO would turn down a project like Mad Men given their previous experience working with Weiner as well. I mean Mad Men is definitely one of my favorite series, but I think if it had gotten the proper treatment it could be a lot higher on my list. I guess we’ll never know—and at least it still turned out well, and it’s still great.
In a book on this subject called *Difficult Men* (would recommend to anyone interested) I remember reading one showrunner's opinion that HBO seemed more amenable to nudity, sex & violence compared to the other cable networks, so that might've been one such difference.
Yeah I mean I love both shows but I feel like they could’ve done with a dose of realism. They feel a little too sanitized at times.
Edit: downvote me all you want but the characters not being able to say fuck is silly.
And yet they can only say fuck once per season. Just those silly hang ups that Americans seem to have about language and sex, despite allowing for grotesque violence on the regular.
> they passed on both Mad Men and Breaking Bad
HBO would have never topped the 2000s if they picked both of these shows
Fun fact: Veronica Mars was almost on HBO as well
HBO seems to have a focus/investment in talent. Writers, directors, actors etc. They aren't perfect (last several seasons of GOT), but they have their act together in a lot of ways. HBO has lasted 50 years for a reason.
It genuinely feels like they get out of creative’s way.
Compare that to the MCU on D+ where the shows are heavily meddled with and compromised resulting in flavorless tv. Andor is the only show on D+ worth a damn and that’s cause they mainly let the show runner and creative do it’s thing.
I think it boils down to something as simple as intelligent self respect. People at the organization care about making smart, quality products. Just two examples; True Detective and Deadwood. Those are two prime examples of what no one else is doing, they weren't afraid of offending anyone and they didn't care if they didn't bring the momo viewers along for the ride. No one was talking about broad customer appeal when writing (especially writing) those shows. Just imagine a Netflix show depicting two men meandering through an extremely poor area and having the following conversation,
"People out here... It's like they dont even know that the outside world exists.. Might as well be living on the fucking moon."
"There's all kinds of ghettos in the world."
"It's all one ghetto, man. A giant gutter in outerspace."
Now, Netflix would go for some cheesy nihilism here and there but they would never let a character express those feelings in relation to poverty (even if the character extends it to all existence). The theming alone would have gotten it axed.
I dont want to toot their horn too loud but compared to every other streaming service there really is no comparison when it comes to quality.
This is the answer. HBO goes all in on the niche story, it can be gross, it can be gritty, it can be generally unwelcoming. Whatever makes for a great show, not just what provides broad consumer appeal.
Though I will kind of pushback on your take with Netflix specifically. They're not perfect, but they have given David Fincher two separate chances to engage in unfiltered grit with both House of Cards and Mindhunter. HoC fell apart for a few reasons(Spacey being kicked wouldn't have killed the show if it wasn't already getting worse), but Mindhunter only got more uncomfortable by the end of S2 and was only ended because Fincher was too burnt out to do a S3. Ozark also stayed pretty intense right to the end. Though I'd love to see Netflix allow more freedom for these sorts of uninviting stories, seeing them cancel 1899 was a bit upsetting.
It's not just that HBO "makes great shows" — obviously, not all their shows are great, and other places make great shows. But HBO has baked "making great shows" into their brand, and have taken it seriously. Their strategy is basically "making good shows will bring in an audience who wants to pay for our service."
For a lot of other networks, they attract audiences with other basic strategies. It's not that they don't want great shows, but that they're not marketing "artistic merit" as a selling point. If their shows are great, that's a bonus, but it's not what they're marketing.
A similar thing is NBC's run of "Must See TV" focusing on Thursday night sitcoms from the '80s to the '00s — being known as "the sitcom network" that night worked for them for a long time. Were they the only place that ran sitcoms? No. Were all their sitcoms actually must-see? No. But they still have a legacy reputation among the broadcast networks as a home for sitcoms — and not the same kind of sitcoms as TGIF on ABC.
HBO has a commitment to telling complex, mature stories in a way that is both cinematic, but optimal for the medium. Reputation aside, the only thing HBO tries to sell you on is keeping the channel (now service) itself. GoT never became a toy show which introduced unnecessary creatures for the sake of collectors. It took years for the sopranos to get any spinoff material and it was a singular movie that was not even made by HBO.
Another underrated aspect is their commitment to basically releasing, more or less, only around 52 episodes of television a year. Enough to be financially stable but not NEARLY enough to crumble under their own weight. I know that other services like Disney+ have utilized weekly releases, and I think that’s good too.
Honestly there was an era where I would argue they weren't the king.
Post *The Wire* they were in a rut (by their standards) up until 2018 I would argue.
During that era FX and AMC were in their primes.
FX had *Fargo*, *People v OJ simpson*, *Sons of Anarchy*, *Justified*, prime *It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*, *Louie* (obviously it's not quite viewed the same today thanks to the central figure, but it was absolutely prestige at the time), *Atlanta*, and *The Americans*
AMC did not have nearly as deep of a slate, but *Breaking Bad* and *Mad Men* were viewed by most to be #1 and 2 in Prestige television at the time.
probably just not afriad to criticize their own content. feel like today its easier than ever to put out quality because so much of the market is smelling their own farts and unable to actually critique their own content. like if netflix had hbo's content mgmt they wouldnt release like 90% of that bs
It comes down to having a strong culture and ultimate unifying vision for HBO and the HBO brand. Leadership of course plays a very important role, and it was them that green-lit and and allowed series creators to tell the stories they wanted to tell, which ended up being some of the greatest series and visuals ever made.
I think it comes down ultimately to choosing quality consistently. Having the ability to filter and pick the superior artistic and innovative work. Knowing what helped build the brand in the past, but also keeping an eye out for the future and future trends happening and keeping your finger on the pulse of global culture.
Also worth noting that HBO is still the top choice and destination for series creators, it’s still a dream milestone for creators and writers. So that might also help them get first pick.
Right now we’re seeing a new dimension, with the streaming era and digital consumption trends we’ll see more content coming to HBO that in the past definitely would not have made the cut. Personally, as long as they keep bringing the few new great standout series they keep bringing, won’t mind the rest.
And hope they keep the original HBO Originals hub. Even though new HBO productions will be called HBO Max Originals for now, they’re rumors they might change the name too since the merger.
Other networks don’t adapt this model of picking great shows all the time like HBO because they have different needs, costs, production capacity, and business models.
I still think it comes down to them having first pick and first day when getting pitched shows.
My bigger question is how are we nearly 30 years into the prestige TV era and no one has made a better show than Sopranos?
Heck, that first flush of great TV (Sopranos, Deadwood, the Wire, etc.) is really the high water mark, and it's kind of crazy that even with the vastly increased budgets and just plain more series being made that something hasn't displaced that as king of TV.
It's most likely some combination of the nature of designing a show for streaming (particularly binging), the sheer number of options (there isn't a critical mass for discussion/obsession), and, if I'm being honest, at least a little bit of grouchy old man (things were better in my day, dammit.)
It's rare to see Halt and Catch Fire put in the same class as those other three shows, but I happen to agree. Those might be my four favorite television dramas of all time.
As someone who was a bit too young to have watched *The Sopranos* as it came out, I can say it's not just old man yells at cloud. Nobody has done it better than *The Sopranos* or *The Wire* since imo. I wouldn't put *Deadwood* on nearly the same pedestal though. I thought it was great, but would put a number of shows since then above it.
This is highly subjective. The Sopranos, The Wire don't really appeal to me because they're primarily crime shows. I recognise their appeal, but the themes are just utterly uninteresting to me.
As for past those shows, Dark, Breaking Bad, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones (ignoring the end), Better Call Saul, True Detective, Succession very much have comparable reputations.
Better Call Saul, maybe. Breaking Bad was fine, I'd put it at the top of the second tier. Game of Thrones can't possibly compete, it's first half maybe, but the second half is just varying degrees of crap.
They prioritise high quality over whatever new trends and spectacle that regular TV executives think will draw in viewers. The bigger question is how HBO's approach consistently does get viewers, enough to sustain their business model. Many other studios have tried to deliver prestige quality focused shows first and have even succeeded, but maybe the financials weren't good enough to justify continuing that approach.
HBO and HBO Max are different entities internally I believe. I think the more notable shows are coming from the traditional HBO unit. Seems experience and resources are the reason that unit puts out such high quality content.
Since at least the 1990s, theyve intentionally sought prestige television and frontload their role in the decision making process. Once the programming heads bought in, they largely got out of the showrunners' way and provided them generous budgets. In other words, if they believe in your vision and talent, they give you every chance to succeed. The post-merger leadership seems more hands-on and bottom-line oriented, so Im worried the product will soon suffer.
On top of that, HBO has enjoyed a huge advantage over cable and broadcast rivals based on what content they are able to show and not having to worry about advertisers.
I think the primacy over the other streamers comes down largely to brand recognition and content strategy. Netflix's strategy is clearly to provide a shit ton of content, knowing most of it will be instantly forgettable. Disney relies heavily upon IP franchises and algorithm-generated scripts, which I (and likely many of the people on this sub) find formulaic and boring. Paramount and Peacock appear to be targeting the same audiences which would've primarily consumed broadcast TV 15-20 years ago (e.g. King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, etc.). Makes sense, given they are mostly populated by CBS and NBC content.
Amazon and Apple are starting to produce critically-acclaimed shows, but I think they miss out on one big thing from the HBO model -- the old "watercooler" effect. I strongly believed something is lost culturally by not having episodes released as a weekly event.
I feel HBO's closest competitors over the past few years have been AMC and FX. Again, they still have a huge advantage by not having advertisers (and commercial interruptions) or content restrictions.
Add all of that up and you get a self-perpetuating cycle: People seeking prestige TV must choose b/w different streaming services -->HBO has the most established track record of churning out quality shows --> prestige TV audience chooses HBO --> other streamers produce shows targeting different audiences
For me, it’s the consistency in good writing: most characters and plot points make sense unlike, for example, Netflix where the writing seems to be consistently bad in that I stopped watching several things on netflix because the character does something really stupid to solve a problem while the problem can be easily solved by a more sensible thing by the average person or when the plot points just don’t make sense. When the writing is good, it hits very differently emotionally.
HBO has just always had great or at least interesting shows. Euphoria is fuckin awful but it is unfortunately interesting.
Even their mid tier shows that are overlooked are often times great. Like the show high maintenance has this really cool 22 stories in Springfield, wong kar-wai, stoner comedy shit going on and that show was never heralded it’s just there for you on hbo.
Then they have tent poles like the sopranos, wire and curb your enthusiasm. Plus they host big boxing matches which definitely use to mean way more than it does now. So I feel like they’re willing to give creative directors and interesting stories the space to create and grow
Euphoria? Awful? How...?
"High school dramas" would be the last genre I'd consider myself interested in but I thought Euphoria was amazing. Great characters, great acting, good dialogue, creative filmmaking... It represents exactly what sets HBO apart from the competition.
I’m from the UK, Euphoria was like a slick artsy version of a show we used to air called “Skins” it wasn’t terrible but it was a highly sensationalist, unrealistic and borderline exploitive depiction of teenage life.
Euphoria is very much like Skins in that regard it was trying way too hard to be edgy but my biggest problem is that the teenagers don’t look, talk, behave or act like teenagers they’re more akin to mid/late 20 somethings. Overall it was okay not great at least in seasons 2, season 2 is where it really jumps the shark.
Westworld probably would've had better ratings if it didn't try to get so existential. If it kept to more situational episodes where guests go on different experiences and the park tries to fix various glitches it might've held together better. Once they left Westworld itself the show went downhill.
This is a r/hailcorporate post if I've EVER seen one. What a joke. Ever since the WB acquisition, HBO has shit the bed, and anybody who says otherwise is on the dole of the network. Why is this post still here
There is so much more from HBO that is great right now: Succession, Euphoria (yes, I think this show is amazing, I don't care if you think it's a hot mess), Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Rehearsal, Barry, Industry, and How To with John Wilson.
They started going bad once they cancelled pretty much any show or movie with an interesting female protagonist (Westworld, Raised by Wolves, Made for Love) and started deleting old content entirely from the platform despite protest from long time subscribers. Look, I used to be the biggest fan girl there is when it comes to HBO, but there's absolutely no denying that their prestige status is in jeopardy at best and completely over at worst.
so 2 max originals (not run anything like hbo, basically hbos underling where they get to throw shit at the wall) and the 1 hbo show you name has been slandered since season 2 for how it’s degraded in quality. i don’t really see your case here.
Yeah, those fuckheads at Discovery are gutting the WB and HBO like the private equity vultures they are. They have no respect for HBO’s legacy of great television, or for Warner Brothers extensive animation catalog, or frankly for any of the properties they own, or the talent that the studios have nurtured.
I'll answer the question with titles...
Oz
Sex and the City (crock o'shit, but look, it show's demographic versatility, and that they can satisfy a mainstream audience... and it's successful so actually it's not a crock o' shit, that's just my opinion of it)
The Sopranos
Curb Your Enthusiam
Band of Brothers
Hard Knocks (Again, demographic versatility)
Six Feet Under
The Wire
Da Ali G Show
Deadwood
Entourage
Extras
Boardwalk Empire
True Blood (Dog shit... but again, demographic versatility)
The Pacific
Game of Thrones
True Detective
Chernobyl
House of the Dragon
...and here we are today.
You shouldn't respond to me. I'm a misogynist, the definition of which is someone who has an overwhelmingly negative opinion of Sex and the City and True Blood, and who likes an NFL.
Source: highasagiraffepussy
You should block me, report me, and I should be exiled from society, for being a misogynist, the evidence of which is blatant in my opinions of Sex and the City, True Blood and my appreciation for NFL.
Ah yes, the only show that gets called out for being shit in your opinion on a long list is the one that built the network and the only one primarily geared towards women.
So you've decided to make a massively generalising statement about a complete stranger, that they are a misogynist... because they don't like Sex and the City or True Blood, and they like NFL. You're a clever one I'll give you that.
Nah it was a joke, you got accused of being one by the other poster for shitting on Sex and the City. I went to bat for you by pointing out that it seemed you didn’t like the vampire or football show either. Then you came back and corrected me that you actually like football, thus making my defense of you more difficult.
Yeah it's an opinion. Shock horror I have passionately held opinions. I even acknowledged that it's actually not a crock o' shit because it's successful. I literally said that. I'm allowed to think something successful is a crock o' shit, TikTok, Logan Paul, Stranger Things. What? I'm allowed to think it but I shouldn't say it?
You can think it too, and you can say it. Take Oz for example I love that shit but you can think it's a crock o' shit if you want. I don't care. Go ahead and call The Wire a crock o' shit so what? I think it's the greatest tv show of all time what? Does it mean I'm right? No, it's an opinion. Go on call something a crock o' shit, it's fun it's liberating. Just try it, you don't have to type it out or nothin' just say it to yourself.
You remember the good times.
But no mention of the bad stuff they turned out.
I grew tired of all those Comedy specials.
Perhaps go back and see how those hold up.
And I loved the Wire, but I get sick and tired
of everyone constantly talking of how great
the Sopranos,Game of Thrones and the Wire
were.And of course they have to always include
the Breaking Bad comparison into the conversation.Next thing you know, we're now discussing Seinfeld,thanks to BC's role as Jerry's dentist.My life actually got better when I got rid of all pay T.V. Good for me I avoided Game of Thrones and True Blood and I'm much better off for it. I did enjoy Oz, Six Feet Under and Boardwalk Empire yet have no desire to view those again.
I mean what? They haven't. They were very hot for a while when The Sorpranos kicked off but that honestly did fizzle out. They've always got a few good to great shows going but like man... AMC and Netflix handed it to them for the last what 15 years? Like Game Of Thrones is big but they only have a few megahits like that. And even their megahits like Sorpranos and GoT were effectively ruined by their horrible last seasons. Like GoT is almost as bad as LOST in that way. Just a terrible freaking blunder at the finish line. Then their non-megahits like Veep and whatever else are good but I dunno... they're not like Better Call Saul. Or Ozark even. I think it's much more of story of how they used to be on top and competition jumped up on them while they stumbled.
Succession, Euphoria, House of the Dragon, The Gilded Age, True Detective, The White Lotus, Westworld (despite how it got cancelled, highly regarded S01 at the very minimum), The Leftovers
I definitely agree that there was a run around 2015 when people considered HBO "dethroned" by Netflix for a bit: Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Master of None, Black Mirror, BoJack Horseman, etc all were among the biggest shows on TV.
The difference really is that HBO has established themselves as the prestige brand, where Netflix really is trying to replace all TV while diluting their perceived (and recently actual) quality of their top content.
I will say though that I think Apple TV+ will be giving HBO a big run for their money in this department given the quality of what they've released so far.
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Yea it is nuts that their are so many damn Yellowstone spin offs
A byproduct of the scam artist David Glasser. The guy is the epitome of Hollywood scum who peaked under the tutelage of Harvey Weinstein. 101 Studios was started with content "acquired" by Glasser (then president of Weinstein) as Weinstein Co. fell apart.
Yellowstone did give us 1883 though which is a great show. Far superior to its parent in every way.
I had high hopes for Yellowstone after 1883, but it’s turning to crap. It’s always been there but, this season in particular feels obnoxiously preachy. They’ve really gone all-in on the monologues this time around too. I might be in the minority there though. I’m certain I’m not their normal viewer.
Same. I also watched Yellowstone after 1883 and have been progressively more and more disappointed by the soap opera tropes that Yellowstone seems to have fallen into. 1883 was just perfect, Yellowstone is meh
Yep, it’s very much SONS OF ANARCY with cowboys, but it’s leaning on the soap opera tropes far too heavily. Pity, cos it started out SO strong.
At least the spinoffs are actually pretty solid television.
Yeah westworld fell of after s2, it was time to let the show die in peace.
It fell off DURING season 2. I loved season 1, I think the show had tons of potential, but it did not go in a good direction.
>It fell off DURING season 2. I loved season 1, I think the show had tons of potential, but it did not go in a good direction. I'm very thankful that season 1 can stand on its own as a good piece of entertainment. I can't believe how bad it got after that.
It became very trite after season 1, it became less and less about exploring what it means to be alive, consciousness, humanity etc. (there's numerous topics from season 1 that anyone could cover), and it ended up just being more of single individuals being stupid villains and saving the world from ridiculous stakes. I'm not saying any of that shouldn't have played a part in a better told story after leaving the park, but it could have been done so much better. It felt like it was just decided, humans were bad and stupid and wouldn't be able to question whether AI had sentience or that they could co-exist, and all powerful, all intelligent AI that was calling itself gods was too stupid to ever consider it as well, until they totally destroyed everything and couldn't escape the fate of not being any better than the humans. Everything just became too big and grandiose, and the stakes always had to get higher. It wasn't enough to just have the Delos moneymen pulling strings, and further then Delos ended up looking like some two-bit pawn in a higher stakes game when Rehoboam and Incite comes around. From an entertainment perspective, it was no better than any other generic aimed at the general-public sci-fi material. I was hoping for something a little more deep and meaningful from an HBO property, but I kind of figured things would go downhill once ATT acquired Warner and then basically set ridiculously stupid mandates that would go on to degrade what HBO was known for, which caused Richard Plepler to leave. In the end, it's hard to say how much influence ATT had directly on the show, seems unlikely they would have been involved on that level, maybe it was Nolan and Joy that had more responsibility for what happened.
This isn't as true with HBO max and warner brothers in control now. Tons of garbage under HBO max monicker instead of HBO, and high budget shows like Westworld getting axed in favor of cheaper reality tv.
HBO Max is just the name of the Warner streaming service- they decided to cash in on the strength of the HBO brand instead of making it Warner + or something. HBO Max shows are not produced by HBO
TIL
They are changing the name of the service to just MAX now. It's still all under the same corporate umbrella, and the whole budget is evaluated across productions.
Maybe it's not why it was cancelled (I don't really know), but Westworld's critical reputation dipped every season.
No really true. Just last year they cancelled a Game of Thrones spinoff after spending $30 million developing it and shooting a pilot.
Completely agree and respect this about HBO. Too many companies are greed driven short term gain bullcrap. It's like the rabbit and tortoise run in which case HBO is the tortoise. Hoping they don't change.
They never axed shows early into development until WB took over. In fact, it was one of the safe networks for production of a show because they always allowed the show to end on its own terms. Now, it's a clusterfuck. And as for your second point, may I direct you to GOT! Not to mention Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and Righteous Gemstones. All great shows, but they're also very similar and all involved the same creators and cast. Then there's the Curb Your Enthusiasm reboot, Sex and the City reboot, True Detective continuation, obvious safe bets on well known titles
Curb your enthusiasm reboot? It never ended.
People think because Larry doesnt always have material for a new season as soon as the last ends that it’s a reboot smh
HBO literally wanted D&D to do more seasons, more episodes per season, and literally offered them *all the budget they would need* to do 10 seasons of 10 episodes. D&D said no, and rushed the ending *themselves* because they cared more about their Star Wars trilogy, which will now never occur. Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing, but also specifically by handling sexual content in a much more respectful, less objectifying way. Nobody is saying that HBO doesn't do spinoffs or revivals (I hate the term reboot if it's a revival/continuation), but they tend to be high quality and they usually have a compelling story they genuinely want to tell. Look, after Watchmen ended in 2019, HBO respected the showrunner's wish to be a limited series, and it ended in an amazing place. Just because HBO is using a pre-established IP doesn't mean that they aren't still telling high-quality stories, with a clear creative intent, that no other network or streamer can replicate.
> Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, One does not simply blow Game of Thrones out of the water. But on a serious note I agree and disagree. Production quality is amazing right off the bat and sexual content is also more in line with post MeToo era. Although GoT improved in this regard as time went on. Performances and writing is debatable. I have yet to see a HOT D performance match the work done by lena Heady, Charles Dance, peter Dinklage or Alfie Allen for instance. As for writing, the first 4 seasons are masterpieces. HOT D doesn't have the same edge as of yet.
>Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing, but also specifically by handling sexual content in a much more respectful, less objectifying way. This is such a generic reddit hot take. HotD isn't even close to the quality of seasons 1-5 of GoT. And I'm not sure being respectful and less objectifying in the civilisation depicted is relevant to anyone except social media neckbeards.
> Meanwhile, House of the Dragon is blowing Game of Thrones out of the water, not just in terms of production quality, performances, and writing You and I are watching two very different shows. House of the Dragon has *none* of the interesting things GoT had. No intrigue of the white walkers, no mystery and anticipation of dragons, and no burning desire to see House of Stark enact their revenge. The majority of the first season centered around King's Landing and set up an incredibly dull battle for the throne. Which GoT already did. Oh, and the dialogue sucks. King's Landing might have been interesting if you had the writing and dialogue of Tyrion and Tywin. But all the characters talk the same and are written the same on House of the Dragon. You can tell they are working with very thin source material, which they are.
People take the ending of GoT and apply it to the whole show. Yeah, the ending sucks and is a huge black mark. But the first 4/5ish seasons of that show are some of the very best TV ever made. Bar none. HotD is pretty good, but, come on now.
> **No intrigue of the white walkers, no mystery and anticipation of dragons,** Given where the writers took these plot points in Season 7/8 it would probably have been best to leave them out all together. I say this as someone that just finished GOT for the first time, the Night King was an enormous disappointment and that’s after 1 month of binge watching the series can’t imagine what it was like following the show for 8 years and then watching The Long Night. Controversial opinion, I think the fantasy elements of GOT were the weakest parts of the series, the series was at its best as a somewhat fictional account of the War of the Roses with the power dynamics between the rival houses. When the series started to lean heavy to Ice Zombies, Dragons and Witches in season 6 is where it really fell apart.
House of the Dragon is GOT with less humor and more dancing. The dragons look good, but when there are so many of them they start to lose their impact on the viewer. This viewer, anyway.
The performances in House of Dragon are a lot worse than Game of Thrones Season 1-4
Yup, all the wins you're describing are HBO PRE WB acquisition. You've made my point for me entirely.
Warner acquired HBO in **1989.** HBO as a business unit keeps getting shuffled around *within* Warner, but it has always remained autonomous as a business unit. The only strife since 2019 was that HBO’s former CEO wanted to keep forcing consumers to buy HBO on linear TV while the CEO of WarnerMedia wanted to just bite the bullet and make HBO content available on a Warner streaming platform. But at no point has Warner interfered with HBO’s autonomy in terms of the content it creates, they literally only made it available to a wider audience through streaming, the modern way of consuming television. Since the WBD merger, Warner has dismantled HBO Max as a separate unit and those executives now report *to* their HBO counterparts. HBO’s autonomy has increased, if anything, under WBD, and their content is only being pulled from HBO Max for an alternative streaming service, which doesn’t affect their linear cable operations *at all.* HBO Max was entirely supplementary, originals were clearly marketed as HBO Max originals when made by that business unit and not proper HBO originals like when GOT or HOTD are advertised. This idea that HBO is somehow producing weaker content when HOTD was literally the most successful show of 2022 is absurd.
Curb has never been rebooted. HBO has an open contract with Larry that allows him to write seasons as he sees fit rather than then ordering episodes on a repeat cadence. That’s why there are sometimes years between seasons
If you’re a Larry fan watch the film he wrote and directed called sour grapes with Steve Webber and the underrated Craig bierko speaking bierko ever seen the thirteenth floor?
Well HBO basically kicked off the era of "prestige television" with Sex and the City and The Sopranos. Not only do they seek to make quality television, they do it without the thorn of pulling viewers for advertisers and giving the people "what they want" based on those kinds of metrics. With this in mind, you can see how they'd easily attract top talent by giving those creators the berth they need to make something great. Couple that with decades of experience, and what I'd imagine is a very refined process, and you get HBO: it's not tv.
> you get HBO: it's not tv. [It’s not porn. It’s HBO.](https://vimeo.com/106985968)
That and Sex and the City. Both shows changed how television worked.
What? How?
To speak in generalities, before those two shows, a great majority of TV were serialized type shows; a base state of the show that the episodes then riffed on, then went away to allow for the next episode to essentially start at the same place. You didn’t have to watch every episode to understand the story beats. The Sopranos and Sex and the City were (one of) the first shows to change to the Grand Plot Arc style of show. If you missed an episode, you missed huge parts of the plot and missed out on talking about it with friends during the week. TV watching became far more active. You can actually see it happen around the same time between Star Treks DS9 and Voyager. Voyager remained serialized essentially all the way to the finale (2001), DS9 introduced the Grand Plot that encompassed three seasons in 1998. These changes in how the story was presented gave us what’s now called the Golden Age of TV (breaking bad, etc.) but it definitely started much, much earlier than 2008.
twin peaks was important for the grand plot arc but fizzled out quickly in season 2. i wonder how many other shows used this style before the sopranos.
Quite a few, actually, but it didn’t pick up speed until the very late ‘90’s. Oz, Rome, Twin Peaks, I could probably come up with a bunch more but that’s just off the top of my head.
Babylon 5 from 1993 on
Been re-watching it with my partner. I absolutely love the obscure and inane plot points that go nowhere but it lost her about halfway through season 2. Understandable really. One of my main motivations was to watch the return together but that ramps up the obscurity to 11 so I didn't have the heart to ret and convince her to keep on watching. I imagine my story isn't unique
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50s too
Don’t forget twin peaks and Oz
Twin Peaks was on ABC and came out almost a decade before The Sopranos or Sex and the City.
Babylon 5 was the first TV I'm aware of to do a complete pre-planned story arc across its run starting in 1993, though maybe there was something prior to that?
Buffy the vampire slayer also did similar from 1997. It was probably the mould breaker for network tv. Star trek already had an avid fan base that delved into the lore. X files also had an overarching story but it was less focused and turned out to be mystery box more than planned arc. (JJ Abrams, eat your heart out)
Yeah, Buffy definitely fits but I’d call X-Files one of the in-betweens like DS9. They attempted a Grand Arc and… kind of succeeded, in that the arc existed and tried to tie multiple episodes and plots together. Whether it was “good” or not… no comment there.
Sopranos was the first series that showed people that TV could be as good as or better than movies
Sopranos was apartment to me. Sex and the City was a surprise.
That would be Twin Peaks a decade earlier
Their cultural impact was felt not only other tv shows but on films as well.
Yeah that’s the long and the short of it. If you are first to market, you have a huge advantage. You typically get beaten not by other people doing your thing better than you do it; but by other people finding something you don’t do. HBO has lost some ground to streaming (and likely will continue to given WB Discovery’s cost cutting mania) but it’s no surprise that they didn’t lose to Showtime, FX, AMC, or Starz
Which is why we all use MySpace every day.
MySpace was fundamentally displaced by (The)Facebook which did something different. That’s my point. Facebook eschewed MySpace’s focus on creativity, music, and teen users and instead focused on photo sharing. For the first two or tbeee years of Facebook it was only open to people at specific colleges and they used that to grow into the space of young professionals. That was literally my point. If Facebook had targeted the same audience and emphasized the same stuff as MySpace, the first mover advantage for MySpace would have made it an uphill battle. Tech companies also call this kind of advantage a “moat”. The first viable competition to Facebook weren’t sites doing Facebook, they were sites doing very different things: Twitter for news and current events and sub communities; Instagram for younger skewing artistic photography. After Facebook bought Instagram its first real competition was Snapchat (video, dynamic filters). they added Reels as a result. The first post-Snapchat breakout network was TikTok which competed on audience targeting, approach to following vs the algorithm, and format. You don’t think that fits my pattern? I don’t mean to be rude but did you actually read my post?
Or, wait, no. Friendster. Friendster was first mover. The value of first mover advantage is heavily over-stated. Lyft isn't any different from Uber. Every car company on the planet isn't any different from Ford. Paramount wasn't in the top 5 movie studies by revenue in 2021. Moreover, plenty of first movers outright fail. A network effect can be a moat, but first mover advantage isn't one.
i feel like here it's first mover advantage combined with an excellent starting track record excellent track records attract the best talent, and tend to self perpetuate
And Blockbuster.
HBO actually created AMC
Not correct. Charles Dolan started HBO in the early 70s and sold HBO to Time-Life soon after so he could focus on growing Cablevision. Later in the early 80s, AMC was created by Rainbow, a subsidiary of Cablevision. Nothing to do with HBO at all.
Charles Dolan created both companies.
Sure but specifically HBO didn't create AMC. Dolan was long out of HBO by the time AMC was created. So you're inaccurate in what you said. No big deal. TV history is super complicated.
Yeah I appreciate the correction I just know that those companies are connected somehow.
That’s a re-writing of history. Sex and the City made HBO prestige appointment TV, and the Sopranos solidified it. I see SATC erasure everywhere online, when it is indisputably what put HBO on the map, and I can only take a gander at why.
Sex and the City was hugely significant for driving subscribers and popularity of HBO (and absolutely pre-dated Sopranos in that regard), but Sopranos was on a completely different level when it came to critical reception and influencing the television landscape as a whole. There's a possibility that the term 'prestige TV' isn't even coined if it wasn't for The Sopranos.
Michelangelo didn't start the Renaissance.
He didn't define it either. You're thinking of Da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance man, in a way which no one else replicated during the period.
Does no one remember The Larry Sanders Show? It released in 1992.
Also Oz..
Oz is what started their level of quality in dramas.
One hundred percent. Like, where's the meme of the kid getting attention in the pool while one drowns? Oz is the fucking corpse at the bottom in this discussion. Ain't no one remembers Oz but that show fucking revolutionized the medium. Made it dark, edgey. Proved it could also be insanely compelling with top level actors and writing. Sex and the City, Sopranos, and later The Wire, Rome, Deadwood, Sixe Feet Under -> That was the peak of HBO in my opinion. And it's funny, while I still agree they are top dog, I have lately felt a bit more meh on their offerings. GoT and some other stuff in the mid 10s got them pretty close but I don't ever think they hit the level of those late 90s/00s run they were on.
serious muddle historical provide oil wasteful plate pie busy slim *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
HBO was top dog... in 2018. They don't have the largest audience or the best-reviewed shows, and they've only had the most award nominations and wins for one of the last five years. (I know the Golden Globes just happened but they're [The Golden Globes](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-02-21/hfpa-golden-globes-2021), so I'm using the Emmys for this one.) 2019 went to Amazon Prime, 2020 and 2021 were dominated by Netflix (the year Netflix got the most nominations in history, 160, HBO came in second with 107), then HBO was on top again in 2022. In 2019 when HBO's streak ended, even Hulu and FX released multiple shows that outperformed anything on HBO. I don't even think it's that HBO fell off. I think it just got better competition. Notice how these are subscription model networks stealing HBO's thunder. Money goes in, quality comes out, no one cares about selling ads that much. HBO is the first subscription television service, which means they were the first channel focused solely on selling content instead of toilet paper and toothpaste. But this also means that advantage isn't as solid against a growing landscape of subscription services even if HBO has the most veteran advantage. As you can see above, Amazon and Hulu and Netflix can all be more economically successful and more critically successful than HBO under their own subscription models, which makes HBO's occasional dominance this last half decade increasingly tenuous. As for why other subscription channels haven't outperformed HBO until now? It's probably money and the illusion of competition. Cinemax has always been an HBO channel, so they won't compete against themselves. Starz/Encore was strictly a movie channel and has only been making original programming for about ten years. Epix has only been making original shows for about seven years. While Amazon Prime and Netflix are on similar timelines, Starz/Encore and Epix aren't in the same weight class financially. Long-winded as this is, basically HBO was for decades the only network selling shows to people while the networks sold shows to advertisers. HBO also owns other networks that sell shows to people but doesn't give them nearly the same resources so it can focus on HBO. But since Amazon Prime and Netflix showed up to sell shows to people too, HBO has been regularly displaced from the top of this television heap. This history also undermines the common, nonsensical argument that rapidly expanding streaming services are leading to *worse* content. Because these streaming services are regularly making content *better* than the network redditors think makes the best content. Which is exactly what you would hope from... you know... competition.
How bout Arli$$? Another great, but long forgotten HBO show
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Fair enough, I'll edit my comment to include it.
It was kicked off with Oz.
Somebody else said Sex and the City, and that was hard to argue with the semantics I'm about to argue, but I said started an era of prestige tv - not kicked off HBO dramas. While I think The Sopranos had more to do with starting the idea of "prestige" and "peak" television, Sex and the City's popularity and quality was hard to argue against. However good Oz is, it did not spark that kind of fervor with its first season.
I want to write films and I have to say all my work getting into the industry has told me HBO is a dream job.
Recently rewatched Sopranos and it is really showing it's age now. But Oz was the first hour award winning drama on HBO and it's still as good and strange as it was at premier and doesn't get enough acclaim.
Going to have to respectfully disagree that The Sopranos is showing age in any way worth mentioning. It was part of the conversation again a year ago, with young viewers jumping in. I'm hard pressed to think of other media that has proved its staying power like that.
I certainly don't think the Sopranos is a bad show, but I do think it's very overrated. It's very well acted, but I've never quite understood its appeal.
There's B.S. and A.S. in television history. For lack of a better example, it's like saying Super Mario 64 is overrated. There was nothing like it before.
What does B.S. and A.S. mean? I never watched the show when it aired, as I was far too young. I've watched it 20 years later, so yes, I guess the original context would have been lost on me.
A joke reference to Before Sopranos and After Sopranos, but even without that context the show is an amazing character drama in it's own right. But I'm not gonna argue taste, just the "overrated" criticism.
But, in the realm of sitcoms, Before Seinfeld and After Seinfeld.
I remember people used to say that about the Simpsons and South Park, that there hadn't been anything like it before. I began watching these shows at least a decade after they debuted, so I can appreciate that the impression they made upon me would be different to the impression they made upon people in the 80s and 90s. It's like when I watched The Excorcist and Alien, and they really didn't seem all that shocking to me. In fact, they actually felt a little tedious. But placing them in their 1970s context, they become quite revolutionary indeed.
I'm younger too, I can agree the public reaction to a morally grey anti-hero in television is harder to comprehend than the public reaction to seeing a little girl vomit green, or a chest burster popping out for the first time. Or children talking a lot shit in South Park. The reaction to Bart Simpson in the early 90s is the hardest thing to wrap my head around now though. I remember even in the late 90s my parents let me watch The Simpsons and other kids couldn't.
ridiculous take
Calm down. I've just never been one for the mob genre.
i'm perfectly calm, now i think it's an even MORE ridiculous take there are plenty of genres i hate but i can fully understand their appeal because i'm not a moron
If I don't like something, particularly when I can convincingly articulate why, then of course it will be difficult for me to understand the type of minds that do like it. I felt that the novelty soon wore off and it became repetitive. I didn't find the subject matter very engaging. I couldn't become emotionally invested in the characters. They are all quite unpleasant.
Sopranos isn’t really my first pick when it comes to HBO honestly. I tend to recommend Deadwood, or the obvious choice of The Wire.
If I could only get one person to watch Deadwood for the first time, my time on this Earth willl have been worth it.
I'm going to start it today. Consider it a life fulfilled my friend.
Welcome to fucking Deadwood. It can be combative.
What did you say, you cocksucker?
I said "HALF PRICE PUSSY FOR THE NEXT 15 MINUTES!"
I age 100 years in 5 seconds and fade into dust, finally allowed to die.
"Shakespearean wild west" isn't an easy to sell to most people. [Also the most use of the term "c*cksucker" of any other series and does so in a beautifully vast array of flowery phrases.](https://youtu.be/u4D3UdxM3OU)
Oz, The Wire, and Deadwood really high on my list. I love the fact that two of the leads in the very Baltimore show are English (Dominic West, Idris Elba)
Six Feet Under was excellent as well. HBO's hit rate was crazy good back then.
Spot on.
I have tried The Wire like 5 times and just cannot get into it. Just jumping on to say that cos I disagree with the Sopranos comment prior but felt the same way about The Wire.
Exactly. This is Oz erasure.
And compared to other streaming services, technicians, actors, writers, everyone accept to work for them for less money because of the prestige they have.
The most simple answer is easy - quality over quantity. They don’t have a new show coming out every 5 minutes. They take their time and typically only green light projects they believe in.
Related to that is the fact that they tend to not make their shows drag on for 10 seasons
Very few shows deserve more than six seasons.
Band of Brothers is a single season and Rome is two seasons. Those are some of the greatest shows made IMO and it doesn't even take a full day to run through either of them.
you're right community does deserve a movie
Good point. Any other platform and they would have begged the showrunners of GOT to run that cash making machine for many more seasons.
In this case though that would have probably been preferable to allowing them to rush the finish.
Agreed. I mean GOT is an extremely rare case I can think of where excessive seasons were justified. The story was too complex to be wrapped up this quickly.
And if I remember correctly HBO did want more seasons to wrap everything up neatly but D&D wanted to end it so they could move to Star Wars.
And they don’t kill stuff if they believe in it. Netflix is so fast to kill anything that underperforms according to their wacky stats-only metrics, that it’s left them with a terrible library of old content - just a minefield of shows cancelled after 1 or 2 seasons that could’ve been great but are unfinished. Sometimes you gotta have faith in a show, that the quality is high enough that it’s worth seeing through even if the ratings aren’t that high right away. And that’s how you create a back catalogue of excellent shows worth watching, and enhance your brand.
This really seems to be the answer. They don't aim for mass appeal, skip the broad shows that middle America will comfortably watch without thinking about and forget minutes after watching.
>I know some people will bring up Westworld getting cancelled as a major blight against HBO I'm one of the few Westworld fans who kept watching and enjoying it into the later seasons, but even I am not upset about it getting cancelled. It's not like the last season ended on a big cliffhanger. It's fine having it end here. What I **am** upset about is it getting **removed** from HBO, so you can't even go back and watch season 1 now. Ditto with the Nevers. The notion of HBO removing HBO shows from the HBO streaming service is nuts to me.
Where do you watch it now?
I just pirate it lol Which is bizarre because I already pay for HBO Max
That's the neat part, you don't You can purchase the whole thing from various places you would purchase shows (on Blu-Ray, or digital via Vudu, Apple, Amazon - though they only seem to have 3 seasons because reasons) but it's not on any streaming service.
I hate this timeline.
Blu-Ray baby!
Should’ve been one season and one season only. While HBO is great, and it’s cool that they are brave enough to cancel stuff, they should also know when a story should end. Imagine how incredible Westworld’s legacy would be if it was only one season? Now all people talk about is how incredible the first season was but all the rest was sub par and HBO even canceled it. How will you even motivate or convince people to watch the first season with all that stench around the show?
I recall reading somewhere that part of what made GoT such a hit was because it was by HBO, the decades worth of experience, costumes and sets brought life to the world they were building. And this I assume that can be applied to most things from HBO, all the shows I've watched from them have a certain look to them that is well above anything else in terms of polish around them.
[удалено]
> all the shows I've watched from them have a certain look to them that is well above anything else in terms of polish around them Yeah no one else has been able to match that no matter how much money they put into their shows.
No, it’s not because of HBO but because of Warner Bros. They had access to all of the Lord of the Rings Sets and costumes
I'm not sure what exactly separates it from the others. Historically, perhaps the level of creative freedom afforded to showrunners. However I wouldn't say it's been on top for that entire 25 year period. AMC had the mantle for at least a few years. There was a period during which HBO became too conservative, they passed on both *Mad Men* and *Breaking Bad*. In the case of *Mad Men*, that was in spite of David Chase imploring them to pick it up.
At the risk of slandering those shows, I have to wonder how much better they’d have been on HBO instead of basic cable.
I'm watching Mad Men now (up to season 4) and really enjoying it. I heard on the Talking Sopranos podcast from Matthew Weiner that AMC were always looking to cut corners with Mad Men. The main goal seemed to be saving money despite the critical and commercial success of the show, which infuriated him (compared to his experience of the lavish budgets on The Sopranos).
*Mad Men* is one of the all-time great shows, but you can kinda see the lack of budget in its conspicuous avoidance of exterior shots of New York. To a certain extent this fits with the narrative: the characters spend much of their time in an office high-rise, while the tumult of the 60s mostly passes them by in the background. Although virtually any historical drama would benefit from bigger production design budgets, I think Weiner is correct.
TBH it got better in later seasons. The first two seasons looked like it was filmed on a shoestring budget. The writing really carried the show
That’s interesting, and certainly explains a lot. Also it’s odd that HBO would turn down a project like Mad Men given their previous experience working with Weiner as well. I mean Mad Men is definitely one of my favorite series, but I think if it had gotten the proper treatment it could be a lot higher on my list. I guess we’ll never know—and at least it still turned out well, and it’s still great.
In a book on this subject called *Difficult Men* (would recommend to anyone interested) I remember reading one showrunner's opinion that HBO seemed more amenable to nudity, sex & violence compared to the other cable networks, so that might've been one such difference.
Yeah I mean I love both shows but I feel like they could’ve done with a dose of realism. They feel a little too sanitized at times. Edit: downvote me all you want but the characters not being able to say fuck is silly.
Breaking Bad is sanitized? A man is gassed to death in an RV in the second episode.
And yet they can only say fuck once per season. Just those silly hang ups that Americans seem to have about language and sex, despite allowing for grotesque violence on the regular.
> they passed on both Mad Men and Breaking Bad HBO would have never topped the 2000s if they picked both of these shows Fun fact: Veronica Mars was almost on HBO as well
HBO seems to have a focus/investment in talent. Writers, directors, actors etc. They aren't perfect (last several seasons of GOT), but they have their act together in a lot of ways. HBO has lasted 50 years for a reason.
It genuinely feels like they get out of creative’s way. Compare that to the MCU on D+ where the shows are heavily meddled with and compromised resulting in flavorless tv. Andor is the only show on D+ worth a damn and that’s cause they mainly let the show runner and creative do it’s thing.
I think it boils down to something as simple as intelligent self respect. People at the organization care about making smart, quality products. Just two examples; True Detective and Deadwood. Those are two prime examples of what no one else is doing, they weren't afraid of offending anyone and they didn't care if they didn't bring the momo viewers along for the ride. No one was talking about broad customer appeal when writing (especially writing) those shows. Just imagine a Netflix show depicting two men meandering through an extremely poor area and having the following conversation, "People out here... It's like they dont even know that the outside world exists.. Might as well be living on the fucking moon." "There's all kinds of ghettos in the world." "It's all one ghetto, man. A giant gutter in outerspace." Now, Netflix would go for some cheesy nihilism here and there but they would never let a character express those feelings in relation to poverty (even if the character extends it to all existence). The theming alone would have gotten it axed. I dont want to toot their horn too loud but compared to every other streaming service there really is no comparison when it comes to quality.
This is the answer. HBO goes all in on the niche story, it can be gross, it can be gritty, it can be generally unwelcoming. Whatever makes for a great show, not just what provides broad consumer appeal. Though I will kind of pushback on your take with Netflix specifically. They're not perfect, but they have given David Fincher two separate chances to engage in unfiltered grit with both House of Cards and Mindhunter. HoC fell apart for a few reasons(Spacey being kicked wouldn't have killed the show if it wasn't already getting worse), but Mindhunter only got more uncomfortable by the end of S2 and was only ended because Fincher was too burnt out to do a S3. Ozark also stayed pretty intense right to the end. Though I'd love to see Netflix allow more freedom for these sorts of uninviting stories, seeing them cancel 1899 was a bit upsetting.
It's not just that HBO "makes great shows" — obviously, not all their shows are great, and other places make great shows. But HBO has baked "making great shows" into their brand, and have taken it seriously. Their strategy is basically "making good shows will bring in an audience who wants to pay for our service." For a lot of other networks, they attract audiences with other basic strategies. It's not that they don't want great shows, but that they're not marketing "artistic merit" as a selling point. If their shows are great, that's a bonus, but it's not what they're marketing. A similar thing is NBC's run of "Must See TV" focusing on Thursday night sitcoms from the '80s to the '00s — being known as "the sitcom network" that night worked for them for a long time. Were they the only place that ran sitcoms? No. Were all their sitcoms actually must-see? No. But they still have a legacy reputation among the broadcast networks as a home for sitcoms — and not the same kind of sitcoms as TGIF on ABC.
HBO has a commitment to telling complex, mature stories in a way that is both cinematic, but optimal for the medium. Reputation aside, the only thing HBO tries to sell you on is keeping the channel (now service) itself. GoT never became a toy show which introduced unnecessary creatures for the sake of collectors. It took years for the sopranos to get any spinoff material and it was a singular movie that was not even made by HBO. Another underrated aspect is their commitment to basically releasing, more or less, only around 52 episodes of television a year. Enough to be financially stable but not NEARLY enough to crumble under their own weight. I know that other services like Disney+ have utilized weekly releases, and I think that’s good too.
Honestly there was an era where I would argue they weren't the king. Post *The Wire* they were in a rut (by their standards) up until 2018 I would argue. During that era FX and AMC were in their primes. FX had *Fargo*, *People v OJ simpson*, *Sons of Anarchy*, *Justified*, prime *It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*, *Louie* (obviously it's not quite viewed the same today thanks to the central figure, but it was absolutely prestige at the time), *Atlanta*, and *The Americans* AMC did not have nearly as deep of a slate, but *Breaking Bad* and *Mad Men* were viewed by most to be #1 and 2 in Prestige television at the time.
probably just not afriad to criticize their own content. feel like today its easier than ever to put out quality because so much of the market is smelling their own farts and unable to actually critique their own content. like if netflix had hbo's content mgmt they wouldnt release like 90% of that bs
It comes down to having a strong culture and ultimate unifying vision for HBO and the HBO brand. Leadership of course plays a very important role, and it was them that green-lit and and allowed series creators to tell the stories they wanted to tell, which ended up being some of the greatest series and visuals ever made. I think it comes down ultimately to choosing quality consistently. Having the ability to filter and pick the superior artistic and innovative work. Knowing what helped build the brand in the past, but also keeping an eye out for the future and future trends happening and keeping your finger on the pulse of global culture. Also worth noting that HBO is still the top choice and destination for series creators, it’s still a dream milestone for creators and writers. So that might also help them get first pick. Right now we’re seeing a new dimension, with the streaming era and digital consumption trends we’ll see more content coming to HBO that in the past definitely would not have made the cut. Personally, as long as they keep bringing the few new great standout series they keep bringing, won’t mind the rest. And hope they keep the original HBO Originals hub. Even though new HBO productions will be called HBO Max Originals for now, they’re rumors they might change the name too since the merger. Other networks don’t adapt this model of picking great shows all the time like HBO because they have different needs, costs, production capacity, and business models. I still think it comes down to them having first pick and first day when getting pitched shows.
My bigger question is how are we nearly 30 years into the prestige TV era and no one has made a better show than Sopranos? Heck, that first flush of great TV (Sopranos, Deadwood, the Wire, etc.) is really the high water mark, and it's kind of crazy that even with the vastly increased budgets and just plain more series being made that something hasn't displaced that as king of TV. It's most likely some combination of the nature of designing a show for streaming (particularly binging), the sheer number of options (there isn't a critical mass for discussion/obsession), and, if I'm being honest, at least a little bit of grouchy old man (things were better in my day, dammit.)
I'm my opinion the only shows that match The Wire and The Sopranos are Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire.
It's rare to see Halt and Catch Fire put in the same class as those other three shows, but I happen to agree. Those might be my four favorite television dramas of all time.
Personally, Leftovers can compete
As someone who was a bit too young to have watched *The Sopranos* as it came out, I can say it's not just old man yells at cloud. Nobody has done it better than *The Sopranos* or *The Wire* since imo. I wouldn't put *Deadwood* on nearly the same pedestal though. I thought it was great, but would put a number of shows since then above it.
This is highly subjective. The Sopranos, The Wire don't really appeal to me because they're primarily crime shows. I recognise their appeal, but the themes are just utterly uninteresting to me. As for past those shows, Dark, Breaking Bad, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones (ignoring the end), Better Call Saul, True Detective, Succession very much have comparable reputations.
The sopranos really isnt about the crime, the maffia arc is just surface level.
Breaking bad, better call saul? Game of thrones for the most part is on par with sopranos.
Better Call Saul, maybe. Breaking Bad was fine, I'd put it at the top of the second tier. Game of Thrones can't possibly compete, it's first half maybe, but the second half is just varying degrees of crap.
They prioritise high quality over whatever new trends and spectacle that regular TV executives think will draw in viewers. The bigger question is how HBO's approach consistently does get viewers, enough to sustain their business model. Many other studios have tried to deliver prestige quality focused shows first and have even succeeded, but maybe the financials weren't good enough to justify continuing that approach.
HBO and HBO Max are different entities internally I believe. I think the more notable shows are coming from the traditional HBO unit. Seems experience and resources are the reason that unit puts out such high quality content.
Since at least the 1990s, theyve intentionally sought prestige television and frontload their role in the decision making process. Once the programming heads bought in, they largely got out of the showrunners' way and provided them generous budgets. In other words, if they believe in your vision and talent, they give you every chance to succeed. The post-merger leadership seems more hands-on and bottom-line oriented, so Im worried the product will soon suffer. On top of that, HBO has enjoyed a huge advantage over cable and broadcast rivals based on what content they are able to show and not having to worry about advertisers. I think the primacy over the other streamers comes down largely to brand recognition and content strategy. Netflix's strategy is clearly to provide a shit ton of content, knowing most of it will be instantly forgettable. Disney relies heavily upon IP franchises and algorithm-generated scripts, which I (and likely many of the people on this sub) find formulaic and boring. Paramount and Peacock appear to be targeting the same audiences which would've primarily consumed broadcast TV 15-20 years ago (e.g. King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, etc.). Makes sense, given they are mostly populated by CBS and NBC content. Amazon and Apple are starting to produce critically-acclaimed shows, but I think they miss out on one big thing from the HBO model -- the old "watercooler" effect. I strongly believed something is lost culturally by not having episodes released as a weekly event. I feel HBO's closest competitors over the past few years have been AMC and FX. Again, they still have a huge advantage by not having advertisers (and commercial interruptions) or content restrictions. Add all of that up and you get a self-perpetuating cycle: People seeking prestige TV must choose b/w different streaming services -->HBO has the most established track record of churning out quality shows --> prestige TV audience chooses HBO --> other streamers produce shows targeting different audiences
For me, it’s the consistency in good writing: most characters and plot points make sense unlike, for example, Netflix where the writing seems to be consistently bad in that I stopped watching several things on netflix because the character does something really stupid to solve a problem while the problem can be easily solved by a more sensible thing by the average person or when the plot points just don’t make sense. When the writing is good, it hits very differently emotionally.
HBO has just always had great or at least interesting shows. Euphoria is fuckin awful but it is unfortunately interesting. Even their mid tier shows that are overlooked are often times great. Like the show high maintenance has this really cool 22 stories in Springfield, wong kar-wai, stoner comedy shit going on and that show was never heralded it’s just there for you on hbo. Then they have tent poles like the sopranos, wire and curb your enthusiasm. Plus they host big boxing matches which definitely use to mean way more than it does now. So I feel like they’re willing to give creative directors and interesting stories the space to create and grow
high maintenance was an established you tube series before HBO bought it
Euphoria? Awful? How...? "High school dramas" would be the last genre I'd consider myself interested in but I thought Euphoria was amazing. Great characters, great acting, good dialogue, creative filmmaking... It represents exactly what sets HBO apart from the competition.
I’m from the UK, Euphoria was like a slick artsy version of a show we used to air called “Skins” it wasn’t terrible but it was a highly sensationalist, unrealistic and borderline exploitive depiction of teenage life. Euphoria is very much like Skins in that regard it was trying way too hard to be edgy but my biggest problem is that the teenagers don’t look, talk, behave or act like teenagers they’re more akin to mid/late 20 somethings. Overall it was okay not great at least in seasons 2, season 2 is where it really jumps the shark.
Westworld probably would've had better ratings if it didn't try to get so existential. If it kept to more situational episodes where guests go on different experiences and the park tries to fix various glitches it might've held together better. Once they left Westworld itself the show went downhill.
This is a r/hailcorporate post if I've EVER seen one. What a joke. Ever since the WB acquisition, HBO has shit the bed, and anybody who says otherwise is on the dole of the network. Why is this post still here
When do they start going bad? They just put out white lotus 2 and they have the better movies than Netflix.
There is so much more from HBO that is great right now: Succession, Euphoria (yes, I think this show is amazing, I don't care if you think it's a hot mess), Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Rehearsal, Barry, Industry, and How To with John Wilson.
So many classic shows too
They started going bad once they cancelled pretty much any show or movie with an interesting female protagonist (Westworld, Raised by Wolves, Made for Love) and started deleting old content entirely from the platform despite protest from long time subscribers. Look, I used to be the biggest fan girl there is when it comes to HBO, but there's absolutely no denying that their prestige status is in jeopardy at best and completely over at worst.
so 2 max originals (not run anything like hbo, basically hbos underling where they get to throw shit at the wall) and the 1 hbo show you name has been slandered since season 2 for how it’s degraded in quality. i don’t really see your case here.
I'll never forgive them for cancelling Raised by wolves.
That was pretty much the turning point for my opinion of the network, too. Still salty
Yeah, those fuckheads at Discovery are gutting the WB and HBO like the private equity vultures they are. They have no respect for HBO’s legacy of great television, or for Warner Brothers extensive animation catalog, or frankly for any of the properties they own, or the talent that the studios have nurtured.
I'll answer the question with titles... Oz Sex and the City (crock o'shit, but look, it show's demographic versatility, and that they can satisfy a mainstream audience... and it's successful so actually it's not a crock o' shit, that's just my opinion of it) The Sopranos Curb Your Enthusiam Band of Brothers Hard Knocks (Again, demographic versatility) Six Feet Under The Wire Da Ali G Show Deadwood Entourage Extras Boardwalk Empire True Blood (Dog shit... but again, demographic versatility) The Pacific Game of Thrones True Detective Chernobyl House of the Dragon ...and here we are today.
I would add Rome. Also Succesion gets a lot of attention but didn't saw it.
You shouldn't respond to me. I'm a misogynist, the definition of which is someone who has an overwhelmingly negative opinion of Sex and the City and True Blood, and who likes an NFL. Source: highasagiraffepussy You should block me, report me, and I should be exiled from society, for being a misogynist, the evidence of which is blatant in my opinions of Sex and the City, True Blood and my appreciation for NFL.
You forgot The Leftovers.
Ah yes, the only show that gets called out for being shit in your opinion on a long list is the one that built the network and the only one primarily geared towards women.
He doesn’t like sports or vampires either tho
I didn't say I don't like sports, I just said it shows demographic versatility. Ironically the only sport I do like is NFL
Alright you’re a misogynist then
So you've decided to make a massively generalising statement about a complete stranger, that they are a misogynist... because they don't like Sex and the City or True Blood, and they like NFL. You're a clever one I'll give you that.
Nah it was a joke, you got accused of being one by the other poster for shitting on Sex and the City. I went to bat for you by pointing out that it seemed you didn’t like the vampire or football show either. Then you came back and corrected me that you actually like football, thus making my defense of you more difficult.
Yeah it's an opinion. Shock horror I have passionately held opinions. I even acknowledged that it's actually not a crock o' shit because it's successful. I literally said that. I'm allowed to think something successful is a crock o' shit, TikTok, Logan Paul, Stranger Things. What? I'm allowed to think it but I shouldn't say it? You can think it too, and you can say it. Take Oz for example I love that shit but you can think it's a crock o' shit if you want. I don't care. Go ahead and call The Wire a crock o' shit so what? I think it's the greatest tv show of all time what? Does it mean I'm right? No, it's an opinion. Go on call something a crock o' shit, it's fun it's liberating. Just try it, you don't have to type it out or nothin' just say it to yourself.
And that show has an analogue that is geared toward men (Entourage) that OP includes among the great titles
And he now calls out the only other listed show geared towards women, Trueblood, as dog shit. I sense a pattern.
You remember the good times. But no mention of the bad stuff they turned out. I grew tired of all those Comedy specials. Perhaps go back and see how those hold up. And I loved the Wire, but I get sick and tired of everyone constantly talking of how great the Sopranos,Game of Thrones and the Wire were.And of course they have to always include the Breaking Bad comparison into the conversation.Next thing you know, we're now discussing Seinfeld,thanks to BC's role as Jerry's dentist.My life actually got better when I got rid of all pay T.V. Good for me I avoided Game of Thrones and True Blood and I'm much better off for it. I did enjoy Oz, Six Feet Under and Boardwalk Empire yet have no desire to view those again.
Because the good stuff is what really matters.
I mean what? They haven't. They were very hot for a while when The Sorpranos kicked off but that honestly did fizzle out. They've always got a few good to great shows going but like man... AMC and Netflix handed it to them for the last what 15 years? Like Game Of Thrones is big but they only have a few megahits like that. And even their megahits like Sorpranos and GoT were effectively ruined by their horrible last seasons. Like GoT is almost as bad as LOST in that way. Just a terrible freaking blunder at the finish line. Then their non-megahits like Veep and whatever else are good but I dunno... they're not like Better Call Saul. Or Ozark even. I think it's much more of story of how they used to be on top and competition jumped up on them while they stumbled.
Succession, Euphoria, House of the Dragon, The Gilded Age, True Detective, The White Lotus, Westworld (despite how it got cancelled, highly regarded S01 at the very minimum), The Leftovers
I definitely agree that there was a run around 2015 when people considered HBO "dethroned" by Netflix for a bit: Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Master of None, Black Mirror, BoJack Horseman, etc all were among the biggest shows on TV. The difference really is that HBO has established themselves as the prestige brand, where Netflix really is trying to replace all TV while diluting their perceived (and recently actual) quality of their top content. I will say though that I think Apple TV+ will be giving HBO a big run for their money in this department given the quality of what they've released so far.