HBO damn near invented the concept of prestige television with Oz, its 1990s prison drama—a show so violent it appeared that each episode had a kill quota. Since then the network has delivered a succession of critically—and popularly—acclaimed series and miniseries: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Rome, Deadwood, and today, Big Little Lies, and Game of Thrones, among others.

HBO’s original series stand out for their obviously painstaking creation. Indeed, even the ones I don’t particularly like—I literally fell asleep during the finale of Westworld’s first season, despite loving its 1970s source material—are obviously lovingly, and expensively, produced. HBO doesn’t do cheap. The network, in other words, has embraced an ethos of quality over quantity: producing only a few select series, plus the occasional movie, rather than flooding the zone with cheap content.