Read Online Game of Thrones A-Z by Martin Howden - Free Book Online
Authors: Martin Howden
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writers of The Wire , and Boardwalk Empire – the searing prohibition drama that was produced by Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese. It also had Game of Thrones , albeit only as a pilot, but already heat was building up about the project.
HBO’s programming president, Michael Lombardo, found the storytelling more appealing than the low-key magic or the exotic milieu, despite the network’s new developmental policy to ‘take shots at shows that we wouldn’t have taken a shot at five years ago’. In August 2010, Lombardo made an unusual confession – he didn’t particularly care for fantasy stories: ‘It wasn’t the genre we responded to, it was the storytelling,’ he said. ‘There’s enormous pressure on the Game of Thrones people. It’s a very sophisticated audience; you have to get it right.’
There were comparisons with True Blood , with HBO executive Richard Plepler admitting, ‘Alan [Ball, creator of True Blood ,] has created this extremely compelling and addictive world. When you get passionate fan bases, they talk with each other and that’s catalytic.’
HBO has nearly 30 million subscribers, and broadcasts to over 150 countries. The network’s origins go back to 1965, when Charles Dolan won a franchise to build a cable system in New York, which became the first urban underground cable system in the US. Calling it the Sterling Manhattan Cable, he laid the cable underneath the streets because the large buildings blocked TV signals.
Time-Life, a production company, bought a 20 per cent stake in the company, agreeing to back Dolan’s idea of the Green Channel – which would become HBO in November 1972.
The pay-for channel showed films and sporting events, but it would constantly lose customers, who grew weary of watching the same films and subsequently cancelled their subscription. However, the channel would continue to innovate with satellite technology and original programming, including HBO’s first made-for-pay-TV movie aired in 1983. Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1989, and HBO is now a part of Time Warner.
The turnaround in fortune, and a sign of things to come, came with The Larry Sanders Show in 1992. Starring Gary Shandling, the fly-on-the-wall comedy/drama of a late-night television show was a major success, winning awards, and it clearly influenced other HBO comedy shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm . Because it’s a subscription-only service, there is more freedom to use explicit content such as profanity and nudity.
HBO’s first one-hour drama series was prison drama Oz , and they followed that up with The Sopranos . The mafia drama would run to six seasons and become part of pop culture. Scoring an astonishing 111 Emmy nominations, the show has been praised for its dark content and well-drawn characters. There is no right or wrong, and the narrative structure, normally so tight and rigid when it comes to episode TV, is fluid and loose. There wasn’t always an explosive third act and a reveal could happen any time, not just as the end credits rolled – a formula that had served TV for decades. People died when you least expected it and the main characters didn’t learn moral lessons at the end.
More impressive shows followed, but they broke new grounds once again in 2002 with The Wire . A slow burner in every sense, the show, about Baltimore cops tackling, in vain, the drug culture that permeates the city from the very top to the very bottom, took a while to get going, and even longer to get an audience.
But there comes a point when the show clicks: it could be the simple shot of D’Angelo playing chess in the middle of a council estate or Jimmy McNulty encouraging his children to spy on a prominent drug dealer in an outdoor market. But, when it does, The Wire is pure TV addiction –each episode layered with so much love and detail in the characters that frequent this realistic world. The show would eventually find an audience, and
HBO’s programming president, Michael Lombardo, found the storytelling more appealing than the low-key magic or the exotic milieu, despite the network’s new developmental policy to ‘take shots at shows that we wouldn’t have taken a shot at five years ago’. In August 2010, Lombardo made an unusual confession – he didn’t particularly care for fantasy stories: ‘It wasn’t the genre we responded to, it was the storytelling,’ he said. ‘There’s enormous pressure on the Game of Thrones people. It’s a very sophisticated audience; you have to get it right.’
There were comparisons with True Blood , with HBO executive Richard Plepler admitting, ‘Alan [Ball, creator of True Blood ,] has created this extremely compelling and addictive world. When you get passionate fan bases, they talk with each other and that’s catalytic.’
HBO has nearly 30 million subscribers, and broadcasts to over 150 countries. The network’s origins go back to 1965, when Charles Dolan won a franchise to build a cable system in New York, which became the first urban underground cable system in the US. Calling it the Sterling Manhattan Cable, he laid the cable underneath the streets because the large buildings blocked TV signals.
Time-Life, a production company, bought a 20 per cent stake in the company, agreeing to back Dolan’s idea of the Green Channel – which would become HBO in November 1972.
The pay-for channel showed films and sporting events, but it would constantly lose customers, who grew weary of watching the same films and subsequently cancelled their subscription. However, the channel would continue to innovate with satellite technology and original programming, including HBO’s first made-for-pay-TV movie aired in 1983. Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1989, and HBO is now a part of Time Warner.
The turnaround in fortune, and a sign of things to come, came with The Larry Sanders Show in 1992. Starring Gary Shandling, the fly-on-the-wall comedy/drama of a late-night television show was a major success, winning awards, and it clearly influenced other HBO comedy shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm . Because it’s a subscription-only service, there is more freedom to use explicit content such as profanity and nudity.
HBO’s first one-hour drama series was prison drama Oz , and they followed that up with The Sopranos . The mafia drama would run to six seasons and become part of pop culture. Scoring an astonishing 111 Emmy nominations, the show has been praised for its dark content and well-drawn characters. There is no right or wrong, and the narrative structure, normally so tight and rigid when it comes to episode TV, is fluid and loose. There wasn’t always an explosive third act and a reveal could happen any time, not just as the end credits rolled – a formula that had served TV for decades. People died when you least expected it and the main characters didn’t learn moral lessons at the end.
More impressive shows followed, but they broke new grounds once again in 2002 with The Wire . A slow burner in every sense, the show, about Baltimore cops tackling, in vain, the drug culture that permeates the city from the very top to the very bottom, took a while to get going, and even longer to get an audience.
But there comes a point when the show clicks: it could be the simple shot of D’Angelo playing chess in the middle of a council estate or Jimmy McNulty encouraging his children to spy on a prominent drug dealer in an outdoor market. But, when it does, The Wire is pure TV addiction –each episode layered with so much love and detail in the characters that frequent this realistic world. The show would eventually find an audience, and
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