Prestige TV and the Streaming Wars

From The Sopranos to binge-watching and Succession: how TV got as good as movies, then got too big.

1999
The Sopranos
HBO’s show about a mob boss in therapy makes TV feel like cinema: complicated anti-heroes, big themes, no easy endings. It kicks off what people call TV’s golden age.
2002–2013
The classics
The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad (a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin) set the standard for prestige drama.
2011–2019
Game of Thrones
The last show everyone watched live on Sunday nights. The final season was so hated that a petition to remake it got more than a million signatures.
2013
Binge-watching
Netflix releases every episode of House of Cards at once. Binge-watching becomes the default, and Stranger Things (2016) makes Netflix a hit factory.
2015
Peak TV
An FX executive coins "peak TV" for the flood of hundreds of new scripted shows a year. Too much to watch becomes the new problem.
2019–2025
The streaming wars
Disney+ and Apple TV+ launch in 2019. HBO Max renames itself Max in 2023, then switches back to HBO Max in 2025. Every studio wants its own service.
2018–2025
The new must-watches
Succession, The Bear, Squid Game, The White Lotus, Severance, The Last of Us, and Adolescence (2025), which filmed every episode in one continuous shot.

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Timeline5 min

From The Sopranos to binge-watching and Succession: how TV got as good as movies, then got too big.

1999
The Sopranos
HBO’s show about a mob boss in therapy makes TV feel like cinema: complicated anti-heroes, big themes, no easy endings. It kicks off what people call TV’s golden age.
2002–2013
The classics
The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad (a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin) set the standard for prestige drama.
2011–2019
Game of Thrones
The last show everyone watched live on Sunday nights. The final season was so hated that a petition to remake it got more than a million signatures.
2013
Binge-watching
Netflix releases every episode of House of Cards at once. Binge-watching becomes the default, and Stranger Things (2016) makes Netflix a hit factory.
2015
Peak TV
An FX executive coins "peak TV" for the flood of hundreds of new scripted shows a year. Too much to watch becomes the new problem.
2019–2025
The streaming wars
Disney+ and Apple TV+ launch in 2019. HBO Max renames itself Max in 2023, then switches back to HBO Max in 2025. Every studio wants its own service.
2018–2025
The new must-watches
Succession, The Bear, Squid Game, The White Lotus, Severance, The Last of Us, and Adolescence (2025), which filmed every episode in one continuous shot.

0/4 answered