HBO has just announced the renewal of three of its current, new series, at least two of which will likely excite you, the other of which is the Sarah Jessica Parker-starring Divorce, which is uneven, sometimes sharp but often just tepid and occasionally bitter, like the grueling process of a long divorce… which is what the show’s about. So maybe that’ll tepidly excite you.
The other two are the A.I. Western/moral drama/incessant puzzle Westworld and sort of its antithesis — the very human comedy of Issa Rae’s Insecure.
The New York Times reports that HBO has been enjoying greater success thanks largely to the widely viewed Westworld, which they clearly funneled a ton of money into, and which, thankfully, has garnered far more of a following than their last mega-drama, Vinyl, perhaps because it is good.
Apparently, the premium cable network had been worried — due in part to a delayed release — that Westworld wouldn’t “land with its audience” as well as they needed it to. But that worry has since been quelled, with its approximately 3 million weekly viewers, and around 11.7 million when you count viewers on services like HBO Go/Now. (That’s supposedly better than even GoT was doing at the same point in its run.) Due to the intricacy and cost of the series, it’ll likely be reappearing sometime in 2018, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, the network has noted that Insecure has a devoted critical/fan following. Variety quotes HBO programming president Casey Bloys saying of all three, “They have done exactly what I’d hoped in terms of connecting with audiences and raising the questions the creators set out to raise.”