By Daniel D'Addario 3/21/12 9:40am

television

HBO_Final_Drew_Friedman

Is HBO’s Luck Starting to Run Out?

Ten years ago, it wasn’t hard to decide what to do on a Sunday night. Everyone watched HBO. The programming on the premium cable network was like nothing else on the tube.

But then, Carrie Bradshaw finally landed Mr. Big, the entire Fisher family died, Tony Soprano stopped believin’ in a New Jersey diner, and Tommy Carcetti became governor of Maryland.

By the time Sue Naegle arrived from United Talent Agency to take the network’s top job in 2008 (alongside co-president Richard Plepler and president of programming Michael Lombardo), the programming larder was looking bare. “We walked into a schedule that was mostly empty,” she told The Observer. And what could be better? “From a development and programming perspective, that’s the dream.” Read More

By Christopher Rosen 6/22/10 12:57pm

Starz Gets Criminal With Underbelly

Crime paid for Chris Albrecht once before, and clearly he’s hoping it does once again. The former head of HBO — who was the executive that put The Sopranos on the air — is planning a remake of the Australian crime drama Underbelly for his new network, Starz. The series — which centers Read More

By Chris Shott 4/28/09 12:23pm

Goldring’s Club Turns Sapphire: Pamela Anderson Stars in Rejiggered Jiggle Joint’s Splashy Striptease

“I’ve got bigger tits than the broads in here!” quipped the jovial Steve Schirripa.

The Brooklyn-born actor perhaps best known for his role as Bobby Baccalieri on HBO’s The Sopranos had just arrived at the boozy grand-opening party for the newly rebranded Sapphire New York strip club on Monday, April 27, looking very “legitimate businessman” Read More

By Christopher Rosen 11/12/08 1:43pm

David Chase Still Mum on Sopranos Ending

David Chase and Jerry Seinfeld have a lot in common. Both men were the creative forces behind two of the most incendiary television shows of the past twenty years; shows which a large majority of the viewing audience (not us!) felt ended with disappointing whimpers. Both men will forever attempt to live up to past Read More

By Irina Aleksander 7/11/08 3:50pm

A Sex and the City Sequel?

It’s just like a cat teetering in a state of anamnesis between lives four and five! One: Sex and the City, the newspaper column (right here in The New York Observer); Two: Sex and the City, the book by Candace Bushnell; Three: Sex and the City, the television series; Four: Sex and the City, the Read More

By Gillian Reagan 6/04/08 5:34pm

Sopranos Scribe to Write Scorsese's HBO Show

The Sopranos alum Terence Winter, a Sopranos writer, is coming down to the dark, seedy Atlantic City boardwalk for Martin Scorsese. He’ll be writing the director’s new HBO project Boardwalk Empire, which will be produced by Entourage bros Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson. The drama is based on Nelson Johnson’s book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, Read More