than a shank and a soul. it was jaw-droppingly violent. hey, it was a men s prison; it probably should be. but you know, it kind of announces the idea that hbo is going to get very serious about doing scripted dramas. it s finished. it s over. but hbo really, in my mind, comes into its own in 1999 with the sopranos. sopranos just is a one of those shows that was a benchmark. it changed like, a lot of things for everybody. throw out the handbook. tony soprano, the lead actor in a drama, he killed a man. we watched him. when he took his daughter on a college tour.
your game plan. johnny carson retiring in the early 90s was the great moment where a huge chunk of the ice shelf breaks off, something that has been there for centuries, for thousands of years suddenly no longer there. tremendous part of history and that s lovely to have made your mark on an era like that. johnny had told no one what he planned to do and we weren t prepared and that set off a game of musical chairs for who would get the throne and there only was one late night throne. hi, you guys. jay leno had been pretty much carson s regular substitute host when he went on vacation. you know what s amazing? this is true. only six months ago people were talking about donald trump as a presidential candidate. that s true. now since then he s had an affair. he s left his wife. he s run up a debt of several million dollars. so i guess he s going to be running as a democrat. jay leno wanted to essentially just continue doing
either he ll have the upper hand on are you will. this is a physical expression that the bold was designed to experience and, p.s., it s fabulous. what are you talking about? i went to smith. the show took an interesting turn by really focusing on the relationship between the women and telling the story of them as really soulmates together as well. you did the right thing buying that apartment. you love it, right? yeah. are. and you won t be alone forever. historically women are often set up in narratives in which only one can succeed. so showing women not competing with each other and supporting each other was also an important narrative change. the. okay, girl, see you tomorrow. okay. night night. the show had a message of freedom and liberation, especially for women, that really resonated. i think sex in the city helped macumba
the white house, cookouts, basketball in the back. in the late 80s hbo was just sort of gaining ground for series. by the 90s hbo had started to begin its explosion. when we started doing dream on, one of the things hbo said to us was it s got to be something that couldn t be on network tv. because hbo was driven by subscribes are and not by commercials and selling advertising time, they had a different way of looking at success or failure. what they were looking for was critical acclaim. you ve watched letterman. you ve watched leno, but what about larry? larry sanders, that is. he s the tv alter ego of comedian garry shandling. garry shandling wanted to do a show that deconstructed the kind of show the tonight show was. just pretend like you re talking to me till we re off
that brought a look and style to the show that really stood out on television. tears coming out of your eyes. ain t no tears coming from my eyes. his eyes are brimming with tears. they had so many african american characters in the cast that on several occasions they were the only people on camera interacting with one another. and that sounds like, so? but as late as the 90s, that wasn t done on television. when a cop shoots somebody, he stands by it. he picks up the radio mic and calls it in. he stands by the body. if not, cops are no better than anybody else. in the 90s, television was getting more complicated, stories were starting to become more episodic, characters were starting to develop and change. none of that happened on law & order. dun dun this was a show that completely delivered on its formula every time. you get a crime, you got the investigation into the crime. you better be packing more than a dirty mouth. you got an arrest. what s the charg