For years HBO set the standard – now it’s just repeats and spin-offs
What does it mean when a sizzle reel only sputters?
Two weeks ago, before the finale of the second season of House of the Dragon, the storied American pay-television network Home Box Office (HBO) compiled a promotional reel to play as part of the episode’s lead-in. Two-minute montages like this, heralding returning hits and previewing new shows, are a television staple, whatever the platform. But HBO’s had always been eagerly awaited and closely scrutinised. The network was the gold standard of prestige television. The heavyweight champ.
But this time there was no knockout punch landed. “The best is yet to come,” declared a triumphant graphic, but the collection of shows pitched, which will air over the rest of this year and in 2025, lacked individual surprises and felt comparatively patchy in its entirety. New titles included the next Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the Armando Iannucci Hollywood satire Franchise, and the 1970s cop thriller Duster.
Matt Smith takes a moment in House of the Dragon.
Among the shows returning with new seasons were The White Lotus, The Last of Us – given the closing slot in recognition of the first season’s success – Sex and the City successor And Just Like That, and My Brilliant Friend. Alongside them was a hybrid category: spin-off series from blockbuster movies. That meant The Batman’s Colin Farrell putting back on the facial prosthetics for The Penguin, plus Dune: Prophecy and It: Welcome to Derry.
Was this really the best?
For a variety of reasons, some of which are beyond HBO’s control, the celebrated network is starting to look stretched. HBO, whose shows air exclusively in Australia on the pay-TV service Foxtel and its sister streaming platform Binge, has an almighty back catalogue that at a glance alone features The Sopranos, The Wire, Veep, Six Feet Under, Chernobyl, Succession, Boardwalk Empire, Girls, and Game of Thrones. If you were remotely into scripted television over the past 30 years the HBO logo was a welcome sight.
The Sopranos, which first aired 20 years ago, was a groundbreaking television show.Credit: HBO
To offer a more like-for-like comparison, here’s what HBO pitched a decade ago, in a 2014 sizzle reel setting up their 2015 slate: new seasons of Game of Thrones, Veep, Girls, True Detective, The Leftovers, Looking, and Silicon Valley, plus the debut of Westworld, The Brink, Ballers and The Jinx. It’s easy to offer judgment with hindsight, but that’s an accomplished collection even if The Brink, a now forgotten geopolitical satire starring Tim Robbins and Jack Black, was an absolute bomb.
HBO will continue to have hits, and that includes new shows. Its chief executive and chairman, Casey Bloys, remains the most revered television executive in Hollywood. But HBO’s formidable track record is starting to overshadow its current output at a time when the company is operating in compromised circumstances.
HBO has long been the crown jewel of its various owners, which have included Time Warner, AT&T, and now Warner Bros. Discovery. The latter, however, is experiencing severe financial difficulties. Revenues are down as cable subscriptions crate in the United States, and advertisers are migrating to online platforms. The lay-offs have been swingeing.
The resulting cost-cutting has now reached our screens. The most notable example was the second season of House of the Dragon, which the show’s creators mapped out over 10 episodes before HBO reportedly cut the run to eight. It meant that an already awkward and sometimes failing season didn’t even have the consolation of a grandiose finale. The considerable cost in producing battles for a fantasy epic, complete with digitally generated dragons, saw the show settle for a marching-to-war montage. Action was replaced by anticipation. House of the Dragon’s already diminished reputation took another hit.
At the same time HBO has unparalleled competition. In terms of subscribers, Netflix dwarfs Max, the Warner Bros. Discovery streaming platform that houses HBO in North America, Asia and parts of Europe (an Australian launch for Max remains a possibility for next year, after HBO’s distribution deal with Foxtel and Binge expires). Netflix is going for quantity. It makes more shows than any other streamer, some of which – such as The Crown and Baby Reindeer – cut into HBO’s realm.
Apple TV+ is going for quality. Wherever there is a Hollywood star attached to a high-profile television series, the tech giant is outbidding every rival. It started with Morning Wars (Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carell) and soon extended to Slow Horses (Gary Oldman), WeCrashed (Ann Hathaway and Jared Leto), Silo (Rebecca Ferguson) and the just concluded Presumed Innocent (Jake Gyllenhaal).
HBO is the target of a pincer movement and its best response – must-see new shows – isn’t being helped by the likes of Dune: Prophecy and The Penguin. Those programs were commissioned not because they sprang from an enthralling creative idea, but because they serviced valuable intellectual property. They might still succeed, but that approach is anathema to the risk-taking that has long benefited HBO. And this is before each Harry Potter movie gets remade as a season of television, starting in 2026.
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