HBO is Back, or, I Like TV

Many of you may already know that I used to work for a cable company. A big one. I've also been a loyal fan of HBO since before the days of Sex & the City and The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm and Real Time with Bill Maher. For a while there HBO could do no wrong. On top of Sopranos and Sex they built a solid lineup of shows -- Alan Ball's Six Feet Under, the incredible (and underrated) Deadwood. They were pretty much the Cadillac of premium cable channels. And then it all seemed to start to fall apart.

I had to work the Monday after the series finale of The Sopranos aired. People were pissed. Inordinately pissed if you ask me. I was one of a very few who actually liked the finale, and it's big, Screw you! to everyone else's expectations. Plus I like Journey. But I digress. Everyone in Metro Detroit canceled HBO. We couldn't even talk them into keeping it for $5 a month. I knew HBO was worried. Sex, Deadwood, and Six Feet Under were all long finished. Losing The Sopranos was like losing your last remaining limb after many years and painful surgeries -- and the HBO sales reps knew it.

Calling Lisa Kudrow's weird and horribly un-funny The Comeback, "the replacement for Sex & the City!" in a sales presentation to our group, the HBO rep looked close to tears. Things got worse with John From Cincinatti. In Treatment features a great cast, but somehow I've never found it compelling. I did rather enjoy the first season of Tell Me You Love Me, but that may have been because my man was being held hostage by the U.S. Navy and there were some pretty, um, shall we say... steamy scenes in that show. Entourage still had to prove itself, and while Bill Maher and Larry David are both hilarious and brilliant, they may be a little bit neurotic for some. HBO needed it's one-two punch back.
They've got it.

I think, more than any other show, Entourage is the new Sex & the City. It's funny, candid, extravagent, and (more than anything else) about four friends who'll do anything for each other. It's proven itself to me and I'm just waiting for it to start winning some awards. But the real point of even wasting the 20 minutes it's taken to write this so far, is to tell you about True Blood.

Created by Alan Ball (whose credits include American Beauty and Six Feet Under) and based on the novels of Charlaine Harris, it's the story of a modern day romance between a 25 year old telepathic waitress (Anna Paquin) and a 173 year old vampire named Bill (Stephen Moyer), who is, to put it simply, really freaking hot -- in spite of being dead. (It's a technicality!) It takes places in rural northern Louisiana. There is sex, comedy, and blood. It is the greatest thing I have seen on TV in a long, long time. HBO is back.