‘Love Life’ Set the Stage for HBO Max’s Original Shows

It’s hard to believe that Love Life Season 2 is already here. It feels like just yesterday that HBO Max was plastering the internet with ads of Anna Kendrick, encouraging viewers to get excited for its latest and greatest streaming service. Perhaps Love Life’s first season wasn’t the media-dominating hit the streamer hoped it would be. But the quiet, sweet show about stumbling through life until you find your soulmate did something even more impressive. In many ways, the series set the template for the type of television that sets HBO Max apart from the pack. Namely? Shows that appeal to women.

When Love Life first premiered as HBO Max’s launch title, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Season 1 currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65 percent, but its viewership faired better. According to HBO Max, two months after its launch, the series was the second most popular show on the streaming service behind Friends, putting it right above The Big Bang Theory. Of course, as is the case with streaming services, HBO Max never released any solid numbers for this metric of success nor did it explain how it came up with its list of the “most popular” shows. But that early win was enough to get Love Life a Season 2 and launch HBO Max into the conversation.

At the time, Love Life felt like an odd launch title. Most streaming services like to start with giant, star-studded swings, like Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, Disney+’s The Mandalorian, or Netflix’s House of Cards. Aside from Kendrick’s casting, Love Life never was and has never been that. It’s a sweet, quiet, and endlessly watchable show about generally nice people looking for their soulmates. It was also a genre that most networks and streamers ignored. Typically, if it’s not on The CW or in the depths of Netflix, there’s no room for rom-coms. Also, Love Life’s first season was centered around a messy woman, a decision that still feels rare in television today. In short, the anthology romance focused on the patterns other streamers often ignored.

Yet everything that once made Love Life seem like an odd choice now serves as the mold for what has made HBO Max’s original programming great.

The fact is, HBO Max has had a remarkable launch year. During the 2021 Emmys, the streamer was nominated for 34 awards, including major honors such as two nominations for both Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Of those nominations, HBO Max won four, including Jean Smart for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in Hacks. By and large, the originals that have received the most attention and accolades are like Love Life: they center on female protagonists, and feel as though they cater to women.

Hacks, the biggest breakout for the streamer thus far, bucks protagonist expectations at every turn. It’s a comedy about two deeply messy women, one who’s in her 20s and another who’s in her 70s. It’s not alone. The Flight Attendant is show about a messy woman, only this time it’s one that’s half comedy, half noir-inspired thriller. Made for Love is about — you guessed it — a messy woman trapped in a loveless marriage in a saga that combines sci-fi with comedy. Raised by Wolves has a strong female lead in Amanda Collins’ Mother, and it challenges TV assumptions even further by being big-budget hard science fiction show, a genre that felt rare before 2021. The now-canceled Genera+ion was a sexually fluid dramedy centered around Gen Z.

Then there’s Gossip Girl. Few shows were more beloved by young women in the 2010s than the original Gossip Girl. HBO Max launched its reboot with a ratio of characters that favored women instead of men and pressed the pedal to the metal when it came to drama. On any other streaming service, these shows would likely premiere a few years down the line as part of a large and growing library. For HBO Max, these innovative experiments have been this streamer’s first steps forward.

Of course, there have been shows that haven’t followed this rule. For example, That Damn Michael Che is a sketch comedy show from an SNL cast member that doesn’t come from or center around a woman.

But whereas most other streamers feel as they’re all over the place, with few exceptions, HBO Max has created a formula for itself. And that formula involves largely ditching the straight, white, male protagonists that have dominated TV for years, and instead putting women front and center for its most exciting shows.

That very formula is one that Love Life evolves upon in its second season. Instead of focusing on another white woman, Season 2 follows the unlucky-in-love trials of William Jackson Harper’s Marcus. Even that direction feels unexpected. Depressingly, we’re still at a point where it’s notable for a show just to have a Black lead. When it does happen, these actors are often relegated to playing cops or thinly veiled metaphors for racial trauma. A rom-com centered around a Black man just living his life and looking for love? That’s “finding gold in a stream” rare.

During an age where the motto seems to be that more is more, it’s hard to define the brand of any streamer or network. But against all odds, HBO Max has done that very thing. It’s transformed the programming niches others have ignored into its greatest strength. And it all started with Darby Carter’s messy love life.

Watch Love Life on HBO Max