Come at the king … HBO changed TV forever, but is its crown under threat in the age of streaming and Trump?

## Summary
Bada binge! … (clockwise from bottom left) Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; Game of Thrones; The Wire; Sex and the City; Deadwood; The Pitt; Curb Your Enthusiasm. Composite: HBO; Warrick Paige; Art Streiber/AP; Photo 12/Alamy; Reuters View image in fullscreen Bada binge! … (clockwise from bottom left) Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; Game of Thrones; The Wire; Sex and the City; Deadwood; The Pitt; Curb Your Enthusiasm. He recalls the period with pleasure. “I was lucky,” he says. “I grew up in that environment where it was really about the creative and about asking ourselves whether things felt special and interesting.” View image in fullscreen A big undertaking … Michael C Hall and Peter Krause in Six Feet Under. If the creators of Six Feet Under, The Wire and The Sopranos shared anything, it was possibly the fact that they arrived in television with their eyes on other media.

## Article Content
Bada binge! … (clockwise from bottom left) Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; Game of Thrones; The Wire; Sex and the City; Deadwood; The Pitt; Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Composite: HBO; Warrick Paige; Art Streiber/AP; Photo 12/Alamy; Reuters
View image in fullscreen
Bada binge! … (clockwise from bottom left) Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; Game of Thrones; The Wire; Sex and the City; Deadwood; The Pitt; Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Composite: HBO; Warrick Paige; Art Streiber/AP; Photo 12/Alamy; Reuters
Come at the king … HBO changed TV forever, but is its crown under threat in the age of streaming and Trump?
It gave us Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and The Wire. But as HBO Max comes to the UK and with new ownership imminent, the network that reinvented television is fighting to stay itself
I
t’s not TV. It’s
HBO
.” It might have seemed like a hollow brag at the time, but this aggressively assertive tagline marked the beginning of a new era in small-screen entertainment. The slogan was a statement about what the US cable network aspired to be but, also, a tacit rejection of what most television still was in 1996. It seemed a brave opening salvo: after all, at that point, there wasn’t yet much basis for it.
HBO (Home Box Office) had begun life in 1972 as a subscription service touting a mixture of films and sport. But by the late 80s, this offering was growing stale; threatened by proliferating networks, the protectiveness of big studios and increasing competition. Original, made-for-TV content was the obvious way forward. But how to find a niche?
As streaming service HBO Max launches in the UK this month, a similar question could be asked, but for entirely different reasons. What, in 2026, is HBO’s niche? There is no shortage of potential platforms for so-called prestige television now. As a direct consequence of HBO’s trajectory over the past three decades, TV now has status and huge Hollywood names routinely appear on the small screen. But with Paramount’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, which owns HBO – and the suggestion that eventually
HBO Max and Paramount’s streaming service
could merge – can HBO retain its unique flavour?
View image in fullscreen
Urban legends … Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City.
Photograph: Craig Blankenhorn/AP
The confidence of HBO’s mid-90s mission statement proved to be well founded. In 1992, The Larry Sanders Show began its reinvention of the sitcom. Five years later, the first season of prison drama Oz dropped; open-ended, morally serious and unashamedly brutal. The following year saw the launch of Sex and the City; entirely different in tone and content but similarly self-possessed and ambitious. Over the next decade, the network became what it had promised; a byword for brilliant, original TV. As the 60s were for music and the 70s for cinema, so the 00s arguably were for television: a flowering and a profusion. The Sopranos, The Wire,
Six Feet Under
, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Deadwood. Like the Beatles and the Velvet Underground, like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, these shows still feel like the gold standard; a beacon of what their artform can aspire to be.
When David Simon brought
The Wire
to HBO in 2002, he presented the network with a hefty “show bible”, outlining his intentions. It’s a magnificently grandiose document, positioning his show as “a vehicle for making statements about the American city and even the American experiment. The grand theme … is nothing less than a national existentialism.” That this kind of creative and philosophical ambition was encouraged is a tribute to Carolyn Strauss and Chris Albrecht, the executives responsible for commissioning the network’s original programming during this era.
Casey Bloys, who is now HBO Max’s chairman and CEO, began working for the network in 2004. He recalls the period with pleasure. “I was lucky,” he says. “I grew up in that environment where it was really about the creative and about asking ourselves whether things felt special and interesting.”
View image in fullscreen
A big undertaking … Michael C Hall and Peter Krause in Six Feet Under.
Photograph: Reuters
For the writers and showrunners, the experience was also unusually liberating. The genesis of Six Feet Under is fondly recalled by its creator, Alan Ball. “Their one note after I gave them my first draft was: ‘We really love this. But it feels a little bit safe. Could you make the whole thing a little more fucked up?’ The outlier nature of this approach – and the gamble it represented – should not be underestimated. “In network TV,” Ball adds, “all the notes can basically be condensed into two thoughts: ‘Make everybody nicer. And articulate the subtext.’ Both of those go against great drama.” HBO would have time for neither.
Ten of the best Sopranos episodes, chosen by its stars
Read more
Very quickly, the network made itself a refuge for mavericks and malcontents. Unlike HBO, a subscription cable channel, the US broad

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- But this wasn’t mindless bingeing; this TV was big , important and uncompromising.
- That’s why Baby Reindeer is so important, I May Destroy You, Fleabag, giving singular people the opportunity to pursue a singular vision will sometimes lead to the extraordinary.

### Areas for Consideration
- Composite: HBO; Warrick Paige; Art Streiber/AP; Photo 12/Alamy; Reuters Come at the king … HBO changed TV forever, but is its crown under threat in the age of streaming and Trump?
- It’s the most difficult period I have experienced.
- And it mitigates against risk-taking.” HBO’s latest big play couldn’t come at a more precarious moment.

### Implications
- It’s HBO .” It might have seemed like a hollow brag at the time, but this aggressively assertive tagline marked the beginning of a new era in small-screen entertainment.
- As streaming service HBO Max launches in the UK this month, a similar question could be asked, but for entirely different reasons.
- As a direct consequence of HBO’s trajectory over the past three decades, TV now has status and huge Hollywood names routinely appear on the small screen.
- But with Paramount’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, which owns HBO – and the suggestion that eventually HBO Max and Paramount’s streaming service could merge – can HBO retain its unique flavour?

### Expert Commentary
This article covers hbo, network, television topics. Notable strengths include discussion of hbo. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 2231.