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The HBS try to decipher what makes prestige TV "prestigious."\xa0

The 21st Century hasn\u2019t given us a lot of reason to recommend it so far\u2014terror, war, fascism, plague, climate disaster, and an impending technopocalyps... but, hey, at least we\u2019ve had good tv!\xa0

Often referred to as \u201cPeak TV,\u201d the so-called second (or \u201cnew\u201d) Golden Age of Television began in the very late 90\u2019s and really cemented its influence in the first decade of the 2000\u2019s. The plots were complex and protracted, not episodic. The protagonists were antiheroes, not heroes, morally ambiguous, hard to endorse, but impossible not to like.\xa0 There was foul language and graphic violence and full-frontal nudity. And since nobody could access this content with an antenna and tin-foil, we paid for it.\xa0

It\u2019s since been dubbed \u201cprestige tv,\u201d in part (I think) to assuage the consciences of all those snooty people who looooooved to say that they \u201cdidn\u2019t watch tv.\u201d Prestige tv included shows you couldn\u2019t not watch\u2014not because you wouldn\u2019t be \u201ccool\u201d or you might be left out of the most recent water-cooler small-talk, but because prestige tv was quite literally re-shaping culture itself.

The Sopranos. Lost. Mad Men. The Wire. Breaking Bad. House of Cards. True Detective. Game of Thrones. Atlanta.

Today we\u2019re going to talk about prestige tv, in my opinion one of the most significant, and uniquely American, artistic movements since rock n\u2019 roll. What makes prestige tv prestigious? How do we know it when we see it? What are some of the best examples of it? And, perhaps most importantly, why are we seeing less of it?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-102-prestige-tv

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