The Hollywood strikes haven’t just been negotiating
That was Peak TV — a term first coined by FX’s John Landgraf in 2015 to describe a problem: too many TV shows. That was back when 400 or so scripted shows aired in a year. Last year, which is likely to be the literal peak of television production, there were 599. With luck, television’s next era will retain something of the innovation made possible by this one. Without it, and if the worst tendencies animating the fight between the unions and the studios prevail, television might face a future shaped more by AI and ChatGPT than by the writers, actors, and creators who made TV seem capable of something like high art.Peak TV quickly got co-opted, as so many useful terms are, to describethere was so much output.
,” the drama about ultrarich siblings squabbling for control of their dad’s media empire, ended just before the strike began. The show is widely cited as “prestige television’s” last gasp. about that, isn’t there? Not just derivative, but symptomatic of an enormous archive of properties built to feed off established fan bases. I’d cheekily call this “Zombie TV” if there weren’tSome genuinely great stuff has come out of this trend. “Better Call Saul” was as good as “Breaking Bad” and “Andor” was superior to almost everything in the Star Wars universe.