Tag Archives: Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction

Pandora’s Box by Peter Biskind is about how the golden age of prestige television drama series in the early 2000s has evolved to an era of “peak TV” in which a saturated market produced 600 new scripted series in 2022 alone. It’s a three act story which begins with how the cable channel HBO distinguished itself from network television and found enormous success and critical acclaim with complex, gritty dramas such as The Sopranos at the turn of the century, inspiring several other series led by antihero protagonists. Then the DVD rental service Netflix disrupted everything, committing to series without pilots and introducing the concept of dropping all episodes of a series at the same time. And then its competitors arrived with tech giants creating their own streaming arms, notably Apple TV, Disney+ and Amazon Prime among others, churning out new series at great expense but not always succeeding in producing high quality content. Some of the detail about the financial side of the business is quite dry, but there are some interesting anecdotes about how some of the best known television dramas were made and why HBO rejected shows like Mad Men and House of Cards. Biskind is best known as a film critic and comes across as someone who doesn’t much care for television which results in an unusual and abrupt tone. However, his deep scepticism for the subject is well placed when discussing the flawed business models and rampant corporate greed in the industry. Continue reading →