Is TV Too Broken to Make Another Show Like The Sopranos?

 

 

 

"Hence the rise of what has come to be known as comfort TV—the Ted Lassos, Great British Baking Shows, Schitt’s Creeks, and Emily in Parises that have become some of the most popular shows on TV. Chase is keenly aware of this shift: “I’ve been told, or it has been implied, that there’s a lack of interest,” among those who hold the purse strings in Hollywood, “in psychology, ambiguity, spirituality.” In other words: all the qualities that made The Sopranos what it was.

Because television has always been a business first and an art form second, there is, of course, a financial impetus behind this trend. The streaming wars escalated in the late 2010s, as studios like Disney and HBO's parent company WarnerMedia (now Warner Bros. Discovery) launched proprietary platforms and scrambled to compete with Netflix, which had already spent years and billions to build an enormous library of originals. “The result of the competition among
the streamers is a stampede to get the biggest audience,” says Biskind. “And the way you get the biggest audience is to be the most bland because you don’t want to offend anybody.”

Now, with most streamers deep in the red and after months of production shutdowns amid a striking Hollywood, this competition for eyeballs has become more desperate than ever. According to Koblin, “There is certainly a threat that TV is about to look like the old days of television, before The Sopranos.” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos recently predicted, he notes, that after subscribers flocked to the generic USA procedural Suits when it appeared on the platform last summer, “next year you’ll probably see a bunch of lawyer shows.”"

read interview with DAVID CHASE
by JUDY BERMAN

Is TV Too Broken to Make Another Show Like The Sopranos? | TIME: