TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH, HBO
Alyssa Rosenberg describes how the premium network could change the face of television
As a critic who has spent the past six years covering Game of Thrones, I’ve thought about what my career will look like when HBO’s epic fantasy series ends.
It’s a huge business question for HBO, which has had a run of rough luck launching new shows, punctuated most recently by Michael Lombardo’s departure as programming head of the network. Here are some thoughts on how HBO should move forward into a challenging new era of television. Stop trying to be important all the time: There were a lot of things I disliked about Vinyl, HBO’s expensive, under-watched attempt to tell a story about the music scene in the ’70s. But one thing that really killed the show was the characters’ tendencies to declare that their efforts to keep a record label going were a way to avoid spiritual death and save the culture, man. HBO’s rise to dominance was fuelled by shows that were praised for saying something significant, whether it was about the violence of nation-building, suburban malaise, urban decay, medieval violence or the choices women make when they have more options than at any previous point in history. But shows like Deadwood, The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Sex and the City worked because they didn’t stop every five minutes to tell you you’re watching something really important. Be less afraid of straightforward sitcoms: Prestige comedies have fallen into cliché just as surely as anti-hero dramas came to overrely on middle-aged white men. The protagonists are arrested in their development, the tone is sour, and often these sitcoms don’t actually have jokes, or even moments of general levity.
Now, HBO does have some very strong funny comedies: I adore Silicon Valley, and I’ve enjoyed Veep over the years. But both of these shows are vicious satires. While the premium networks have walked away from the format, series such as black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat have proved there’s plenty to say with a family comedy. Break with the white-dude brand: It’s not entirely fair to HBO that the network has a reputation for difficult white men as both subjects and showrunners. Series like Deadwood and Game of Thrones have fantastic female characters, and The Wire remains one of the richest displays of African-American acting talent ever to appear on television. But while other networks have made more explicit plays for nonwhite viewers and have tried to build their brands by shaking up stereotypes, HBO is a bit behind the curve. Develop a mini- or limited-series program: One of the smartest things FX has done is to let Ryan Murphy develop American Horror Story and American Crime Story as flagship brands that draw in fantastic casts and creative directors. HBO would be smart to develop a similar magnet for actors and audiences. To date, HBO has tended to pick stories that can be told in two hours. But there’s plenty of political history that would be great at a six-, eight- or 10-episode length.