HBO Sundays

HBO Sundays is a primetime block of television programming that has been airing on the pay-cable network HBO since March 15, 1998. HBO has traditionally used their lineup to launch critically-acclaimed, boundary-pushing, prestigious original series in a variety of genres, including drama, comedy, and late night variety. HBO's Sunday night lineup has been home to The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Girls, Veep, Succession, The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and The Last of Us.^[1][2] HBO president Casey Bloys referred to Sundays as "our flagship night for flagship shows."^[3]

HBO typically airs original programming on Sundays from 9pm to 11:30pm throughout the year, with occasionally programming being placed in the 8pm hour in rare instances. Most of the shows broadcast in this slot have been one-hour dramas and half-hour comedies, although documentary series and limited series have become more common in recent years. The traditional HBO Sunday night lineup consists of a one-hour drama series at 9pm, followed by two half-hour narrative comedies at 10 and 10:30pm, and since 2014, the late night show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver closing out the night in the 11pm timeslot, though in recent years, HBO has been producing fewer comedies for Sunday nights and opting to air documentary series in the 10pm hour some of the time.

In 1998, HBO executives moved their critically-acclaimed series The Larry Sanders Show from Wednesdays to Sundays for its sixth and final season and paired it with From the Earth to the Moon, the Tom Hanks-produced prestige docudrama about the Apollo program. HBO executives selected Sunday nights in a strategy meant to counteract the traditional broadcast networks, who typically neglected programming the weekends with high-tier series and opted to air these shows during the week instead.^[4][5] HBO head of programming Michael Lombardo said, "Sunday was a wasteland. Broadcast networks didn't do anything on Sunday night. Football wasn't quite the thing it is. And so it was counterprogramming: 'Let's see if we can make Sunday night our place.'"^[1]

That summer, HBO launched Sex and the City on Sunday nights. It would become one of the network's flagship shows and define HBO's Sunday block, alongside fellow ratings juggernaut The Sopranos, which began airing the following year. The Sopranos became a huge hit with audiences, critics, and awards voters, despite all the major television networks having passed on it.^[1] The lineup became so popular in the early 2000s that HBO began using the marketing slogan "Sunday is... HBO."^[4][3] "Ever since The Sopranos, it's owned the day," said The Ringer.^[1] Off the backs of these two shows, HBO began seriously competing with the broadcast networks for awards, earning the most Emmys of any network in 1999 for the first time.^[6] Buoyed by the success of Sex and the City and The Sopranos, HBO began ordering more original series to fill out its Sunday night lineup throughout the year. Choosing to air a show on Sunday night became HBO's way of indicating to critics and audiences that the show was "a big deal."^[7]

The following years saw HBO debuting new shows like critical darling Six Feet Under, miniseries Band of Brothers, and Larry David's Seinfeld follow-up Curb Your Enthusiasm, which aired on and off on the network for 24 years.

"Sundays are obviously a defining element of our brand," HBO and HBO Max executive vice president Zach Enterlin was quoted as saying. "You know you'll have something great on Sunday nights. It's part of our DNA."^[2]

Paul Rudd's character referenced HBO's Sunday night programming in the 2009 film I Love You Man, saying "You ever watched Sunday night programming on HBO? It's spectacular."^[1]

Competitors Showtime, AMC, and Starz followed HBO's lead and began airing their own blocks of originals on Sunday nights.^[2]

In 2011, HBO launched Game of Thrones, a new prestige fantasy series based on George R.R. Martin's novels A Song of Ice and Fire. By 2014, the show had topped The Sopranos as HBO's most-watched series of all-time, averaging 18.4 million viewers per episode.^[8]

In 2013, HBO poached John Oliver from Comedy Central, after the comedian's critically-acclaimed run guest hosting The Daily Show, and signed him to host his own late night show. This resulted in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which debuted the following year, and added a traditional late night show to HBO's Sunday night lineup for the first time.^[9] The show, which has been on the air for eleven years and counting, is HBO's longest-running Sunday night series behind Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Referring to HBO's 2014–2016 Sunday night programming, HBO executive Michael Lombardo said, "It just felt like the apotheosis of what you promised. You start off with something in the 9 o'clock spot that was dramatic and emotional, and then you had a smart but palate-cleansing two half-hours. And then what a great way to end the evening with John Oliver. When I think of a moment of scheduling perfection, that was probably it."^[1]

In 2019, after AT&T purchased HBO's parent company Time Warner, HBO expanded to 150 hours of original programming, a 50% increase over the year before. The network began expanding its original programming to a Monday night block,^[3] but they have struggled to create a night as popular as its Sundays.^[1]

In spring of 2023, HBO executives opted to air the finale of the hit show The Last of Us at 9pm on March 12, during the second hour of the 2023 Academy Awards, rather than relocate it to a different night. The move paid off and netted the episode a series-high 8.2 million viewers.^[4][10]

While fewer and fewer viewers watch Sunday night shows on the actual night, opting to view them on DVR or streaming later, the network continues to program its most prestigious shows there.^[3] The Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon is popular with audiences, but it has so far received lower ratings and worse reviews than its predecessor.^[11][12] The network has not had a show top Game of Thrones ratings records since. Due to resources going to Warner Media's streaming service HBO Max following its launch in 2020 and AT&T selling HBO's parent company in 2022,^[13] the network HBO has seen its total hours of scripted Sunday night programming decrease from its high-spending AT&T heyday.^[1] In recent years, the network has begun to rely on documentary series to fill outs its programming, which are less expensive than scripted shows. In addition to that, many of HBO's new Sunday night series are not based on original ideas like some of the network's biggest hits; instead, they're spin-offs and prequels to WarnerMedia film properties like Dune, It, Green Lantern, and Batman villain The Penguin.^[14][15] In summer of 2024, Slate ran a piece called "The End of HBO Sunday Nights", which covered the decline in cultural relevance of the programming block.^[7]

Throughout the lineup's history, the amount of original scripted series HBO has produced has fluctuated, with the number of total shows and shows of each genre rising from the 2000s, peaking from 2018–2019.^[1] During each of those years, HBO produced 14 total Sunday night shows, consisting of eight half-hour comedy series and six hour-long drama series. This table does not include acquired programming from other networks like Doll & Em and Summer Heights High.

• Animation Domination, a Fox Sunday night block of adult animated comedies that has run under that name since 2005
• Must See TV, a primetime Thursday TV block on NBC from 1993 to 2006 and 2017–2021
• TGIF, a primetime Friday TV block on ABC from 1989 to 2005

• HBO.com
• Lineup data from The Ringer