It's a weird time in television. There's plenty of good TV, with fun new titles like "Widow's Bay" and "Furious" in the mix. However, we're several years past the peak prestige television years, when the streaming wars were really in full sway. Instead of the calendar being full of splashy new event titles like new Marvel and "Star Wars" franchise spinoff shows, or ambitious star vehicles like "Big Little Lies," we're seeing episode orders shrink across the board, lots of belt-tightening, and long-in-the-works projects being cancelled left and right. Linear television is still on the decline, but the enthusiasm for streaming has hit some bumps.
Disney+ has cut way back on Marvel and "Star Wars" television projects, to the point where the majority of what's still running are animated shows. A third season of "Daredevil: Born Again" and a second season of "Ahsoka" are the only live action offerings we appear to be getting in 2027. Part of the reason is that theatrical revenues have recovered since COVID, so what might have been a fourth season of "The Mandalorian" became the theatrical feature "The Mandalorian and Grogu," and episodes of an intended "Moana" television series were hastily reworked into "Moana 2." This leaves the Disney+ slate feeling awfully empty. Meanwhile, over at DC, the Wonder Woman and Amanda Waller TV projects are no longer in development.
There are signs everywhere that streaming event television is hitting the skids. There was a lot of chatter earlier in the year about how Netflix couldn't seem to keep audiences around to watch the second seasons of their shows like "One Piece" and "The Four Seasons." I don't think that Netflix's shows have been particularly lacking compared to their competitors, but the streamer just hasn't done a good job of marketing and supporting many of the shows that they have, and the long waits between seasons have made it impossible to keep some fandoms going. "Stranger Things," their biggest hit, went out with a bang at the end of last year, but nobody actually seems to have liked it all that much. However, Netflix does have plenty of more modest hits in their catalogue, and I think they'll be fine in the long run. Hopefully no more of "The Witcher" though. That ship has sailed, hit the rocks, and sunk forever.
What prompted me to write this post was watching several lackluster seasons of Apple TV+ shows that I couldn't bring myself to write reviews for: "Silo," "For All Mankind," and "Sugar." All three were a bore this year. I love that Apple is funding all of this science-fiction programming, but their shows have been severely hit or miss. "For All Mankind" had a fantastic first year, and has been in a steady decline ever since. A sixth and final season will premiere in 2027, but there's more excitement for the "Star City" spinoff. I really like "Silo," but it's been going around in circles without much story or character progression for the last two seasons. Meanwhile, "Sugar" really should have stayed a miniseries like Colin Farrell's last big TV outing, "The Penguin." The second season had an incredible cast, but felt aimless. These were all shiny prestige series that really distinguished themselves at first, but weren't very good at being television shows over the long run. I also skipped the new "Ted Lasso" season, by the way. That show felt like it was over after the third season, and the fourth looks too much like a spinoff of itself.
Then there's "House of the Dragon" over on HBO Max, which feels like it's the poster child for this whole, messy, current streaming era. It's an epic scale franchise show that is chasing the popularity of a progenitor that everyone loved, but was so mismanaged that it completely lost its cultural cachet and audience goodwill years ago. It's been beset by production troubles - reduced episode counts, big gaps between seasons, and trying to stretch out the source material beyond what it can sustain. I liked much of the third season, but feel no small amount of relief that the show will be ending with the fourth. The smaller scale "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" will hopefully fare better trying to do less.
While we're on the subject of HBO Max, there are still a lot of big event shows on the horizon, not the least of which is the new "Harry Potter" reboot that everyone is already fighting about. However, there are noticeably less of them now than there were three years ago, and expectations are much more measured. Sure, I want to see "Neuromancer." Let's just hope that this one stays a miniseries.
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