Entourage turns 20: Has any hit TV series aged quite so radioactively?

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https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-b2581402.html

Entourage, which debuted on HBO on July 18, 2004 and ran eight seasons through 2011 plus a 2015 theatrical movie, "was more complicated than just money and sexism," says Louis Chilton. "To its detractors, Entourage is basically 'Toxic Masculinity: The Show' – with a fanatical worship of wealth, womanising and celebrity culture thrown in for good measure," says Chilton. "Outing oneself as an Entourage fan in this day and age is, in other words, quite the red flag. Based loosely on the life – or, rather, the lifestyle – of Mark Wahlberg (minus the history of racist hate crimes), Entourage was never quite a phenomenon. At the time HBO started airing the series, 20 years ago today, the US network was in the midst of a historic purple patch. Entourage overlapped with The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The Wire, and Curb Your Enthusiasm; compared to these shows, it was a crass and obnoxious interloper. Its reputation for misogyny has only snowballed in recent years, something not helped by sexual assault allegations lodged against ex-cast members Jeremy Piven, who played Vinnie’s foul-mouthed agent Ari Gold, and Kevin Connolly, who plays Vince’s best friend/manager Eric ‘E’ Murphy. (Both actors have denied the assault allegations.) That Entourage was deeply, transparently problematic is pretty much beyond dispute at this point. And yet, all these years later, it would be inaccurate to write off the series as merely an amalgam of its worst qualities. Often, apologists for Entourage will defend it from the same banal parapet: the dubious assertion that it is really a show about male friendship. In truth, it has little of value or nuance to say on the subject. Far more interesting is how Entourage explores the movie business – frequently, with a kind of insider-y skew…The series was generally astute in its understanding of the film industry and gave fans a fictionalised peep behind the scenes of, say, the difficulties of promoting a film on a talk show, or what it’s like to be in conflict with an ursine super-producer named, not-so-subtly, Harvey Weingard. More than this, though, Entourage touched upon something fundamental about the way we as a culture narrativise the film industry."

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