HBO: Holding (Barely) On?

HBO has not quite kicked its original series programming development executive Carolyn Strauss to the curb, but they’ve certainly stripped her of any powers.

Variety reports: “Strauss was said to be mulling over the weekend whether to take a production deal or cut ties entirely, but by Sunday it was apparent that she would stick with the net but in a different role.

“Holding up an official announcement is the fact that with no obvious internal front-runner to succeed Strauss, HBO also hasn't yet been able to identify a big-name replacement.”

This comes after recent HBO series that Strauss had greenlit – “John From Cincinnati,” Lucky Louie,” “Tell Me You Love Me” and “In Treatment” – were all too oblique or humorless or just downright depressing to score the kind of audiences the network had become accustomed to after its success with “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under,” “Sex and the City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which she helped along to their success (she became the network's entertainment president in 2004). I imagine the fact that HBO had Matthew Weiner’s pilot script for “Mad Men” sitting around its offices for six or so years before letting AMC get a hold of it figured somewhere in the decision, as well.

(BTW, “John Adams,” HBO’s current miniseries, falls under the auspices of HBO Films, which is run by Colin Callender.)

I don’t know Strauss except from her appearances at TV Press Tour (though I have a friend who goes to the same temple as she does, so by today’s standards, that virtually makes me an expert), but she always seemed a little counterculture for HBO, particularly given how buttoned up the place has become. No doubt she fit right in when it was more a boutique operation (she has been with HBO for more than 20 years) programming funky stuff like “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Mr. Show” and “Da Ali G Show.” (Last year’s cult sensation, “Flight of the Conchords,” might’ve fit more cozily in HBO’s lineup a decade or more ago.)

But lately she sort of seemed like a bomb-thrower amid HBO’s corporate culture, somehow getting huge money for a provocation-for-provocation’s-sake like “Rome” or forcing a titillating downer like “Tell Me You Love Me” down a lonely nation’s throat (one could almost hear her saying, “A show with this much explicit sex that depresses you? In your face, America!”). That’s hardly a criticism – trying to shake things up is actually a pretty good thing, unless, of course, you’re being paid quite handsomely and in the end you don’t shake things up so much as induce shrugs.

Anyway, with the passing last week of “The Wire” and Strauss’ downgrade following Chris Albrecht’s ouster for playing rough with the ladies, HBO’s halcyon days have officially come to a close. Which is not to say that a new Golden Age looms over the horizon, just that at this point there’s not much evidence pointing to one.