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January 19, 2020 07:34 pm

HBO's New Space Comedy Mocks 'Tech Bros in Charge'

Engadget reports on a new tech-industry-in-space comedy premiering tonight on HBO:If you thought that HBO was done mocking technology companies now that Silicon Valley is done, think again. Avenue 5 is the channel's new sitcom, and one that asks the question: "What if tech bros were in charge of more than just our internet histories?'" The answer, at least according to the first half of the season, is that it won't be pretty -- or safe... The Avenue 5 is a large space liner that, in the words of cinematographer Eben Bolter, is designed after a vulgar space hotel that goes too far and "gets the details wrong". This Titanic-like vessel and its 5,000 passengers are on a routine jaunt through the solar system when a minor disaster strikes, and its course is altered. But this is space, where a small deviation changes the flight time from eight weeks to several years. The ship is owned by Herman Judd (Josh Gad) of the Judd Corporation, a self-regarding business magnate who, in Bolter's mind, has "only ever had one good idea." He's not quite an analog for the Bezoses and Musks you may be thinking of, but more a cracked-mirror version of both. Throughout the show, he attempts to impose his thinking on the crisis as if he was still in California, or wherever Silicon Valley moved after the show's alluded-to Huawei Wars. Early on, Judd is presented with the intractable problem of space physics, and he hopes to fix things as he did on Earth. He says, in the Jobsian tradition, that you can make something happen by making someone say that it can. The fight between visionary optimism and reality is harder when you're surrounded by an infinite vacuum, after all. Avenue 5's point seems to be that you can't simply blue-sky your way out of a crisis when reality keeps getting in the way.

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