First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 4th 2023

This week, our regular visitor is my occasional co-presenter on VISION ON SOUND, SANDY McGREGOR, that connoisseur of the cleverer end of classic telly who I am always keen to welcome back to the show in order to elevate my usual choice of topics to chat about above the usual television fayre that I tend to squander my days watching so that I can talk to you about it.

As well as his love of the more “grown up” aspects of classic telly , SANDY is also a bit of a fan of lists, or at least the sort of lists compiled by the GUARDIAN of the “fifty favourite television moments” variety.

And it was because of one of those lists that he happened to spot that, as part of our ongoing occasional series of television anniversaries that ought to deserve a mention on the show, we’d somehow completely failed to notice that the American Television production company HOME BOX OFFICE (HBO) had marked fifty years of service towards the end of 2022.

Responsible as they are for such well recognised television gold as THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE, SEX AND THE CITY, GAME OF THRONES, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, and the latter-day hit SUCCESSION, amongst a whole heap of other highly-regarded series, the success of HBO seems counter-intuitive when you consider its roots in the form of “pay-per-view” sporting events.

And yet, despite such a background, HBO has most definitely thrived, and so SANDY joined me to have a bit of an old natter as we rattled our way through the GUARDIAN’s list of THE FIFTY GREATEST HBO SERIES ever, as compiled by MICHAEL HOGAN and SAMMY GECSOYLER, a list so packed in quality television programmes that shows like WESTWORLD, JOHN ADAMS, and GENERATION KILL don’t even get a mention.

Honestly, this is a list of such rich pickings that it can even afford to omit series from its younger sister HBO MAX.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.