Prestige TV and the Streaming Wars

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.

The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad (a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin) set the standard for prestige drama.

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.

Netflix releases every episode of House of Cards at once. Binge-watching becomes the default, and Stranger Things (2016) makes Netflix a hit factory.

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.

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.

Succession, The Bear, Squid Game, The White Lotus, Severance, The Last of Us, and Adolescence (2025), which filmed every episode in one continuous shot.