“It’s not TV, it’s HBO.” Remember that old tagline? For nearly all of its history, broadcast television has been fighting against the perception that it’s subordinate to film as a storytelling medium. Television was just media for the masses, as opposed to the more erudite aficionados of cinema (who, by the way, poured into theaters to see the A Minecraft Movie last weekend, so go figure).
And then came the era of peak TV, with streamers investing in big concepts and big stars to rival any theatrical release. Prestige TV meant quality and acclaim. It opened the door for A-listers to move freely between the big and small screens. Everyone started describing their shows as a [insert number of episodes]-part movie. But nothing in Hollywood ever stays static for long. As the studios play catch-up to make profits on their streaming services, and an anxious public looks to the familiarity and comfort of yesteryear, things are starting to change yet again. Now the lines between what’s “TV,” what’s “HBO,” and what’s “streaming” is murkier than ever.
Which brings us to HBO’s hit medical drama The Pitt. The Noah Wyle-led series wrapped up its first season with its 15th episode, “9:00 p.m.” Fifteen is a lot of episodes for a streaming show these days. And it’s not the only way the spiritual successor to ER is emulating the broadcast network model. The Pitt reunites Wyle with his former ER collaborators R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells. Other than Wyle, there aren’t any bankable stars with familiar names in the cast (though the popularity of the show is likely to change that soon enough). It’s serialized in the sense that each episode takes place in real time during a single hour of one day (a format perfected by Fox’s 24 back in the early 2000s), yet the patients tend to filter in and out so often you could drop in on almost any episode earlier in the season without being lost. The last few episodes are more connected, as the aftermath of a single storyline unfolds, but even that feels like a classic sweeps two-part event. It’s almost as if HBO is finally admitting that TV, at least in the sense they intended with that now famous marketing campaign, might actually be something worth aspiring to after all.
Hulu goes all in on nostalgia
HBO isn’t the only one trying this approach right now. Other streamers seem to be toying with the old network formula as well. Hulu’s recent genre-defying thriller Paradise feels oddly retro, considering it’s set in the near future. It’s reminiscent of the post-Lost era, when networks were going all in on high-concept ideas, throwing every crazy premise against the wall to see what stuck. Paradise is a black-box show built around a central mystery—Who shot the president?—that swiftly opens up to more questions, twists, and secrets revealed as the season goes along.
It stars Sterling K. Brown as the head of the president’s secret service detail, alongside James Marsden (in Lost-style flashbacks) as the president and Julianne Nicholson as an eccentric billionaire with questionable motives. The show takes some big swings and they don’t always connect, but it’s always a fun ride, even in its silliest moments. Like The Pitt, Paradise came out in weekly installments rather than being dumped all at once, and rightly so. That gave viewers time in between to discuss, come up with theories, and speculate about the fates of the characters. Some shows are simply better served by a weekly release schedule rather than a binge model, so it’s nice to see streamers like Hulu coming around to the idea.
Another recent throwback is Hulu’s first multi-camera sitcom, Mid-Century Modern (you can read Watercooler’s interview with the cast here). Created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the guys who brought you Will & Grace, it stars Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham as gay roommates who move into a home together in Palm Springs after the death of a friend. The late, great Linda Lavin (in her final television performance) also appears in eight of the 10 episodes as the mother of Lane’s character. Think Will & Grace meets Golden Girls. The half-hour comedy dropped on March 28 and has received mostly positive critical praise so far, but time will tell whether it will click with Hulu’s audience.
Previously, on Netflix
Meanwhile, over on the streamer that popularized the concept of binge watching, experimenting with multi-camera sitcoms is nothing new. You may be surprised to learn that Netflix has attempted to launch no less than 17 such sitcoms since 2016. Only a handful have made it past a second season, and even fewer have broken out as legitimate hits. The biggest relative successes so far have been the legacy sequel Fuller House, which got five seasons and 75 episodes before concluding in 2020, and The Ranch, starring Ashton Kutcher, which beat its run by five episodes with a total of 80 and ended the same year. The only sitcom currently running on Netflix is The Upshaws, a family comedy co-created by and starring Wanda Sykes, now in its fourth and final season.
But sitcoms aren’t the only traditional TV format Netflix has been trying to master. It’s also dabbled in live sports, awards shows, and talk shows. Many shows with a prominent host’s name in the title have come and gone without much fanfare, including A Little Help with Carol Burnett (12 episodes), Norm Macdonald Has a Show (10 episodes), Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (40 episodes), and Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness (six episodes). But there’s renewed hope on the horizon thanks to one of Netflix’s most popular regulars. Currently airing live every Wednesday night, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, a continuation of 2024’s short-lived experiment Everybody’s in L.A., brings a strange joy and fresh energy to an otherwise tired formula.
Mulaney is a natural host, bringing just the right blend of curiosity, cynicism, and self-deprecation to the role (as all the greats did before him). But the show works best when the disparate panels of guests, a cross-section of experts and celebrities from a wide range of backgrounds, chat and joke around with each other like bemused strangers stuck at the same wedding table. The interstitial film segments featuring ordinary folks talking about the mundane aspects of their
lives are also weirdly poignant. The comedy bits are more hit and miss, but you can feel the writers working their way through it and figuring out what works in real time. Everybody’s Live clings to the conventions of old-school talk shows—of which Mulaney is clearly a fan—while simultaneously trying to subvert them. It’s all very postmodern, in the best way. If Netflix gives it a chance to find itself it might just have its first genuine hit talk show on its hands.
Like any company selling a product to consumers, streaming platforms will be paying close attention to what connects with audiences. If viewers are in the mood to return to the familiar comforts of things past (and it sure seems like they are) expect to be seeing more shows like these coming down the pipeline. After trying to reinvent the wheel for the last decade or so, maybe it’s time for streaming services to acknowledge that the networks might actually know what they’re doing after more than 70 years in the game. Innovation is great, but why waste time, energy, and money to fix something that wasn’t exactly broken in the first place?
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