As the anticipation builds to the season two finale of the amazing Big Love viewers are wondering what is left to fill the void. Lately there has been much talk and speculation about an assumed demise of HBO, the pay television channel that all but revitalized the art form. With such excellent and long running favourites and cult favourites Mr. Show, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, Rome, Deadwood and Big Love, (not to mention great documentaries and mini-series) the channel made itself a place where writers, directors and actors could develop a show that did not have to stick to network and basic cable restrictions.
This is not to say that other shows weren’t trying new things… many in the Joss Whedon aficionado fan club would site Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, as would fans of killed-before-their-time cult favorites Arrested Development and the Judd Apatow\Paul Feig created Freaks and Geeks. But with networks pumping out more and more medical, law style police-style procedurals (the Law and Orders and CSIs, not to mention nearly EVERYthing else on CBS), television had for a long time become a pretty stale place.
It was HBO who pushed the boundaries of what audiences could expect from the medium, fully realizing the potential of serialized storytelling. What stood out with these shows was not only the scope of production, but more importantly the opportunity for audiences to see plotlines and character development as something more resonant than one episode (what I call “Monster of the Week”) story arcs. We could see story lines season by season develop and resolve with a sense of finality to the arcs, much different from the treading water status quo of network telly.
But now with most of the classic HBO lineup gone the way of Nate Fischer and Christopher, the network appears to be struggling a bit to find adequate replacements and revitalize with new blood. The excellent polygamist family epic Big Love looks to be the only drama hitting its stride. Which is a good thing, since the incomprehensible John from Cincinnati (dreamed up by Deadwood creator David Milch) failed to inspire much from critics and audiences (much less make any damn sense) and was canceled.
Beyond Big Love and the hilarious offbeat comedy Flight of the Conchords, the lineup is, for the first time, vulnerable… Entourage feels pretty played out and the return of Curb, while highly anticipated, feels about a year too late. Overall as great as Big Love is, it seems to still fall short of the highs felt by Six Feet Under and The Sopranos.
So what happened? As this New York Times piece suggests, HBO is not the only game in town anymore. Showtime, their biggest rivals have begun to put together a series of shows to compete (Weeds, Dexter, Californication for example), while other networks like FX and AMC have launched some pretty promising new shows (FX’s Damages and AMC’s Mad Men). Meanwhile Sci Fi is readying their final season of Battlestar Galactica, ABC preps the final seasons of Lost, and NBC continues on with Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock. Sufficed to say, with so much choice we are in something of a television renaissance. This can be a good thing.
It’s more accurate to say, as the article points out that HBO is not on its back swing, but perhaps not quite the behemoth it once was when it was the only big kid on the block. If anything, they are in a retooling phase, setting up their next phase of shows that will hopefully fill the gap (a vampire series by Six Feet Under‘s Alan Ball?!?!). Without HBO controlling all great television like they did in the late 90s and up until Tony Soprano went black, we are seeing a great upswing in the medium that is by far more exciting than tv has seemed in years…its has become fun again to gather around and discuss the previous night’s developments. One can only hope that entities such as HBO and the others continue to push those boundaries.
So… What do you think? What are your favorite shows right now? What shows are you looking forward to returning this fall?