What a great take on this. I can relate. There was a good 15 years where I watched everything on HBO. I collected the box sets. Just this week, my wife and I unsubscribed this week, content with our Apple TV shows for a while. The "Prestige TV" success rate is higher. I'm not an expert on how anything is greenlit in the biz, but why are so many things being developed at once these days by studios? (Not just HBO but everywhere?).
HBO felt like an authored brand for a long time. Really great curated content. It was special. I don't get that feeling now. I wonder who else gave up this week. It's like a Pulitzer winning author deciding they're going to quadruple their output, with the same results . . .
interesting, i feel like the last handful of years I really enjoy HBO. I can’t name anything besides Succession and Hacks though atm so maybe I am misremembering. Apple is very good, but I don’t think it’s had a show ascend to the levels of those shows for me, except Slow Horses.
I still love Succession—that’s peak TV in every way, but now several years past?
But outside of that masterpiece of a series (a proper novel) - Something feels off, as Sophie has expressed, from about 2022 to me. The writing across their newer shows feels stretched so thin. Older HBO shows—The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Band of Brothers—felt uncompromising. Like they knew exactly what they were doing from the start.
Now we get stuff like The White Lotus—gorgeous, but designed as a mini-series. (Meaning they're winging it, in a sense, as they go, which did show in S3).
Meanwhile, Apple TV is quietly building some of the best long-form stuff around. Severance is maybe the best example: you can tell they’re playing the long game. It has a fully formed world with room to grow. I'm an episode from finishing S2 and I still see so much potential for that world to grow. Disclaimer, I understand, was greeted with more division, but what a worthwhile experiment: bringing on one of the world's greatest writer/director's for a 7-hour film, essentially. (Disclaimer > The Last of Us S2 (tenfold), at least).
I’m not saying HBO is bad now. But between the latest marketing (less focused, more focused on "vibes" than anything else) and the slightly scattershot development we're seeing, it doesn’t feel like the gold standard anymore. I have no experience in the business to know, but it's a shocking amount of development at HBO in way too short a time, and now the "brand" is somewhat hazy to me - and perhaps that is the trap: stretching the brand too far so that it becomes less meaningful.
I think it didn't skewer tech oligarchs enough. I wonder if what the script looked like before notes, it feels a bit dumbed down when considering all the evils these people are involved in. Also needed more context of the Ray Kurzweil predictions— singularity, nanotech in healthcare, etc.—which are actually pretty interesting!
Also AI deepfakes exist now and all ppl use them for porn and horrible CSAM, so I don't get how it would like... start wars or whatever. All the regional conflicts the film alluded to already happen by virtue of like things like Facebook.
If you want a deeply depressing but kinda thoughtful watch on how tech facilitates totalitarianism, '2073' (streaming on HBO Max) is interesting if not bleak.
The Leftovers is such a fave honestly 😭 I've seen The Night Of, yes, saw it when it first came out! I remember enjoying it but I'd have to rewatch to remember exactly what happened
ha! you know what, this has potential...I've been seeing a lot of stuff recently about how A24's commercialization efforts are not really what we'd like to see. Let me sit on this for a bit. Wonder if this needs some historical/contextual research
Yeah it definitely wasn't atrocious or anything but I would just consider it not very good. It would have worked perfectly as an SNL sketch but it was an hour and a half too long not really saying anything I'm not seeing on the Internet every day. That's a great suggestion ha!
You can pinpoint the decline in HBO’s quality pretty much exactly to the moment AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2016, and even further to Richard Plepler stepping down as CEO in 2019.
Everyone (rightfully) loves to point fingers at Zaslav for what’s happened to the HBO brand post-Covid, but Casey Bloys carries as much, if not more, blame as CEO.
I'm just there for John Oliver and the streamer's still decent taste in third-party movies they pick up - Brutalist, Mickey 17, Saw the TV Glow, Dream Scenario, etc. And hey, Pee-Wee As Himself was awesome. Maybe they still got it in the doc department? Anyway, nothing lasts forever, and Trump loyalsts are loyal - that ain't a positive characteristic out of context!
Ha, great stuff. I guess I've also not wanted to admit HBO has been on the slide. Good to see I'm not alone. And I was literally just about to press play on Mountainhead, but now you've given me pause
I finally was ready to start saying just "max" without any hbo attached after years of resistance and actually tried it out in conversation only days before getting the email. I also laughed out loud. Come on.
Hey Sophie, just thinking out loud here - I believe there is a promising correlation between your past allegiance to HBO and thus subjecting yourself to "discomfort" for the "reward of feeling culturally relevant" and your death of cinema/ theaters as cultural gyms thought process. Okay bear with me on this...because the current status of cultural releases are more or less "slop" the environment in which said slop is delivered is conducive to what one is RECEIVING. if you're being spoon-fed the same ole same then why the need to change the theatrical experience at all? As it is simply a reverberation of what you've already subjected yourself to seeing. i.e. going to watch a cookie cutter recycled IP on the big screen where no thought or emotion is evoked- then here's your conveyor belt service pushing you into that moment. BUT the moment we start presenting films that are "TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCES" once again. That evoke and excited and enthrall and captivate our minds to the point of NEEDING to talk about it afterwards to ANYONE then the environment in which conversation can be cultivated and a regaining of the "excitement" going into a movie is inevitable. I'm just saying the state of cinema and the place in which we exhibit it our mirrored images of one another and once we start demanding MORE from one - the other will subsequently follow. they are forever linked. But this hinges upon the audience's willingness to WANT to be transformed which I think now more than ever - we do. we need it like we need a good set of squats. but to your gym analogy maybe the vast majority of people don't WANT to put in the work of "getting mentally fit" but they need it anyway and so it our job as the filmmakers and film purveyors to demand more from our own consciousness to create the kind of movies and spaces where the "audience" (which is also us) will follow suit. okay sorry for the semi-ramble - just getting some thoughts down on (digital) paper! lol
What a great take on this. I can relate. There was a good 15 years where I watched everything on HBO. I collected the box sets. Just this week, my wife and I unsubscribed this week, content with our Apple TV shows for a while. The "Prestige TV" success rate is higher. I'm not an expert on how anything is greenlit in the biz, but why are so many things being developed at once these days by studios? (Not just HBO but everywhere?).
HBO felt like an authored brand for a long time. Really great curated content. It was special. I don't get that feeling now. I wonder who else gave up this week. It's like a Pulitzer winning author deciding they're going to quadruple their output, with the same results . . .
interesting, i feel like the last handful of years I really enjoy HBO. I can’t name anything besides Succession and Hacks though atm so maybe I am misremembering. Apple is very good, but I don’t think it’s had a show ascend to the levels of those shows for me, except Slow Horses.
I still love Succession—that’s peak TV in every way, but now several years past?
But outside of that masterpiece of a series (a proper novel) - Something feels off, as Sophie has expressed, from about 2022 to me. The writing across their newer shows feels stretched so thin. Older HBO shows—The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Band of Brothers—felt uncompromising. Like they knew exactly what they were doing from the start.
Now we get stuff like The White Lotus—gorgeous, but designed as a mini-series. (Meaning they're winging it, in a sense, as they go, which did show in S3).
Meanwhile, Apple TV is quietly building some of the best long-form stuff around. Severance is maybe the best example: you can tell they’re playing the long game. It has a fully formed world with room to grow. I'm an episode from finishing S2 and I still see so much potential for that world to grow. Disclaimer, I understand, was greeted with more division, but what a worthwhile experiment: bringing on one of the world's greatest writer/director's for a 7-hour film, essentially. (Disclaimer > The Last of Us S2 (tenfold), at least).
I’m not saying HBO is bad now. But between the latest marketing (less focused, more focused on "vibes" than anything else) and the slightly scattershot development we're seeing, it doesn’t feel like the gold standard anymore. I have no experience in the business to know, but it's a shocking amount of development at HBO in way too short a time, and now the "brand" is somewhat hazy to me - and perhaps that is the trap: stretching the brand too far so that it becomes less meaningful.
This read was a rollercoaster of emotions lol! It is sad to consider how much the writing has been downgraded even in their prestige shows :(
‘Mountainhead’ was truly awful, should have stayed in Jesse Armstrong’s drafts until he had something actually interesting to say.
Haha thank you for saying that! Exactly - this film could have been a fun SNL sketch. In essence, it was a void DRAG
I think it didn't skewer tech oligarchs enough. I wonder if what the script looked like before notes, it feels a bit dumbed down when considering all the evils these people are involved in. Also needed more context of the Ray Kurzweil predictions— singularity, nanotech in healthcare, etc.—which are actually pretty interesting!
Also AI deepfakes exist now and all ppl use them for porn and horrible CSAM, so I don't get how it would like... start wars or whatever. All the regional conflicts the film alluded to already happen by virtue of like things like Facebook.
If you want a deeply depressing but kinda thoughtful watch on how tech facilitates totalitarianism, '2073' (streaming on HBO Max) is interesting if not bleak.
The biggest tragedy here is the world's loss of your notebook on The Wire 😩
I know 😭😭 My mum hates anything physical it drives me mad lol
Maturing is realizing that hole that The Leftovers has left in my life will never be filled 🥲🥲 I miss it every day.
Have you seen The Night Of?
The Leftovers is such a fave honestly 😭 I've seen The Night Of, yes, saw it when it first came out! I remember enjoying it but I'd have to rewatch to remember exactly what happened
Worth a rewatch if you ever have the time! Riz Ahmed at his best
Is there an A24 follow-up to this tribute series?
ha! you know what, this has potential...I've been seeing a lot of stuff recently about how A24's commercialization efforts are not really what we'd like to see. Let me sit on this for a bit. Wonder if this needs some historical/contextual research
Well I thought MOUNTAINHEAD was fine. A (relatively) low-budget stage play. Could have done with an AI-generated Gene Wilder cameo.
Yeah it definitely wasn't atrocious or anything but I would just consider it not very good. It would have worked perfectly as an SNL sketch but it was an hour and a half too long not really saying anything I'm not seeing on the Internet every day. That's a great suggestion ha!
You can pinpoint the decline in HBO’s quality pretty much exactly to the moment AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2016, and even further to Richard Plepler stepping down as CEO in 2019.
Everyone (rightfully) loves to point fingers at Zaslav for what’s happened to the HBO brand post-Covid, but Casey Bloys carries as much, if not more, blame as CEO.
Absolutely!
I'm just there for John Oliver and the streamer's still decent taste in third-party movies they pick up - Brutalist, Mickey 17, Saw the TV Glow, Dream Scenario, etc. And hey, Pee-Wee As Himself was awesome. Maybe they still got it in the doc department? Anyway, nothing lasts forever, and Trump loyalsts are loyal - that ain't a positive characteristic out of context!
They still got some good docs indeed but they've been overdoing it on the cults recently 🥲
Ha, great stuff. I guess I've also not wanted to admit HBO has been on the slide. Good to see I'm not alone. And I was literally just about to press play on Mountainhead, but now you've given me pause
You're definitely not alone! Would be curious to see what you think - to me it felt like a long sketch but oh well 🤣
Bring back Carnivale!
Justice for Carnivale
I finally was ready to start saying just "max" without any hbo attached after years of resistance and actually tried it out in conversation only days before getting the email. I also laughed out loud. Come on.
The great Max rebrand is a true Greek tragedy
I watched all of The Sopranos during Covid. I don’t think I’ve watched HBO since. I don’t think I need to.
Peakkkkk. Though I always feel obligated to recommend Veep to people
Hey Sophie, just thinking out loud here - I believe there is a promising correlation between your past allegiance to HBO and thus subjecting yourself to "discomfort" for the "reward of feeling culturally relevant" and your death of cinema/ theaters as cultural gyms thought process. Okay bear with me on this...because the current status of cultural releases are more or less "slop" the environment in which said slop is delivered is conducive to what one is RECEIVING. if you're being spoon-fed the same ole same then why the need to change the theatrical experience at all? As it is simply a reverberation of what you've already subjected yourself to seeing. i.e. going to watch a cookie cutter recycled IP on the big screen where no thought or emotion is evoked- then here's your conveyor belt service pushing you into that moment. BUT the moment we start presenting films that are "TRANSFORMATIONAL EXPERIENCES" once again. That evoke and excited and enthrall and captivate our minds to the point of NEEDING to talk about it afterwards to ANYONE then the environment in which conversation can be cultivated and a regaining of the "excitement" going into a movie is inevitable. I'm just saying the state of cinema and the place in which we exhibit it our mirrored images of one another and once we start demanding MORE from one - the other will subsequently follow. they are forever linked. But this hinges upon the audience's willingness to WANT to be transformed which I think now more than ever - we do. we need it like we need a good set of squats. but to your gym analogy maybe the vast majority of people don't WANT to put in the work of "getting mentally fit" but they need it anyway and so it our job as the filmmakers and film purveyors to demand more from our own consciousness to create the kind of movies and spaces where the "audience" (which is also us) will follow suit. okay sorry for the semi-ramble - just getting some thoughts down on (digital) paper! lol