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- HBO
- Jan 13, 2019
- HBO
- Jan 13, 2019
Summary Matthew Carnahan's six-part limited series about the rise and fall of three early dot-coms: Netscape, the early web browser; TheGlobe.com, a social network; and Pixelon, a video streamer.
Created By: Matthew Carnahan
- HBO
- Jan 13, 2019
- HBO
- Jan 13, 2019
Valley of the Boom
Season 1
Season Premiere: Jan 13, 2019
58
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Where to Watch
Summary Matthew Carnahan's six-part limited series about the rise and fall of three early dot-coms: Netscape, the early web browser; TheGlobe.com, a social network; and Pixelon, a video streamer.
Created By: Matthew Carnahan
Where to Watch
Season Episodes
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
58
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
64% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
58
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
64% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
If it sounds weird, it is, but it’s exactly the right amount of bizarre to make this otherwise dense and tangled piece of modern history palatable--and hilarious.
Each chapter’s pace flows well, but there can be a herky-jerky energetic inconsistency between episodes as Carnahan throws in one diversionary gimmick after another. ... Such contrivances come at the expense of gravitas, but given the frequent opacity of the stories behind what actually happened, a viewer can’t fault Carnahan too severely for doing all he could possibly do to keep the story light and limber.
A nutty sprawl that's often amusing, occasionally interesting, sporadically informative and almost completely off the rails. A hoot.
With everyone playing to the camera, from actors who break the fourth wall to their real-life counterparts who sit for interviews, the result is system overload. Boom is entertaining yet can be exhausting as it is illuminating. [7-20 Jan 2019, p.11]
The portion of this hybrid scripted-nonfiction show drawn from interviews with real-world tech pioneers and scenesters (among them, recognizable faces including Mark Cuban and Arianna Huffington) is light but enlightening. By contrast, the time the show spends dramatizing the stories its talking heads explain is poorly spent, spinning a relatively thin narrative into a six-episode run through repetitious and tiring use of post-modern storytelling techniques that are as tired today as a dial-up modem.
Valley of the Boom abounds with self-aware asides and fanciful fillips, and these are variously pandering, bizarre, and endearing. ... Where McKay’s scenes [in "The Big Short"] clarify, these tend to confuse and clutter. ... The show has no particular ambition to draw its characters as people. Rather, they are figures of Wild West lore and common cliché.
Valley of the Boom’s skimming voyage across the biggest moments in Silicon Valley’s late-90s scene is educational, and even a little nostalgic. But it also feels like a missed opportunity to dive deeper into what should have been learned (and wasn’t) in terms of tech growth, or to explore a different prospective other than from those who happened to ride a investment wave at exactly the right time.
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