For 36 years, Sessions Payroll has had the honor of working with HBO. HBO has been a groundbreaking force in the entertainment industry since its inception in 1972 and remains the most critically lauded premium cable channel.
Looking back at the history of HBO is a retrospective of the “Golden Age” of television. Rarely has one entertainment brand had as lasting of an impact on both popular culture and critics alike. Every list of the best TV series of all time would feature several HBO shows, mirroring HBO’s Emmy hauls throughout the decades. Just take a look at Paste Magazine’s list of the top 50 best HBO shows.
Sessions currently handles payroll services for HBO’s latest generation of critically acclaimed and Twitter trending shows, including Barry, Winning Time, Perry Mason, The Gilded Age and the upcoming series from The Wire’s David Simon, We Own This City, and we’ve been feeling a little nostalgic. We decided to take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of our biggest HBO hits.
Our relationship with HBO began in 1986, when Sessions was tasked with handling payroll for Comic Relief’s inaugural fundraising special, hosted by legends Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoop Goldberg. Raising funds for people in need, especially the houseless community (a cause that Williams was particularly dedicated to), the comedy special featured a Who’s Who of the best comedians of the era, including George Carlin, Garry Shandling, Estelle Getty, Sid Caesar and Jon Lovitz. Comic Relief continued their HBO specials, headlined by the best comedians, until 2010.
It’s hard to think about Six Feet Under without thinking about the end of Six Feet Under - easily one of the greatest final episodes of any series ever. We can’t even listen to Sia’s “Breathe Me” without bursting into tears. Launching the careers of Lauren Ambrose and Michael C. Hall, with a career-defining role from Peter Krause, Six Feet Under masterfully blended comedy and drama while examining what life means when we all know it can come to a quick, and often surprising, end. Rolling Stone has an excellent oral history on what it calls “the beloved landmark series.” Six Feet Under has inspired many of today’s most popular series.
We’re grouping these two brilliant comedies together, not because of the many Seinfeld crossovers, but because these two shows use the same hilariously nasty bite to illuminate the flaws of humanity. While Curb remains an HBO mainstay (Larry David writes a new season whenever he’s good and ready), Veep came and went during one of the most bizarre political periods in U.S. history. With life imitating art, it might have seemed difficult for the talented writers of Veep to top what was happening off-screen, but with one of the sharpest comedic casts ever assembled, anchored by the genius Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep kept us horrified and entertained when we needed it. Meanwhile, Larry and Curb remain steady and unchanged. The world evolves but Larry never does, and we love/hate him for it.
Multi-talented creator Issa Rae was one of the first major stars of the YouTube era, her popular The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl catching the industry’s eye for her singular voice. HBO wisely picked up her witty, moving and exceptional series Insecure, which ended its five season run in 2021. Joelle Monique’s fantastic article for the AV Club touches on what made Insecure so remarkable, and we expect to see many series inspired by Rae’s achievements, hopefully also on HBO.
We’re proud to be partners, and fans, of HBO and can’t wait to see what other exciting new shows debut. We’re particularly thrilled about Veep showrunner David Mandel’s upcoming White House Plumbers and the long-awaited season 3 of Bill Hader’s Emmy-winning Barry. After all, it’s not TV, it’s HBO. And you can never go wrong with HBO.
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