6 Reasons You Should Be Watching Silicon Valley

2. It's A HBO Comedy

There are four certainties with HBO shows you don't get with any other: 1. It'll probably be great, 2. It'll probably be at the least a cult hit, 3. Swears 4. Boobs. In the pilot Silicon Valley reinforces most of these certainties. Number four has yet to be hit, but then HBO comedies do differ a little from the rest of their fare (eg Game of Thrones, True Detective, all that serious business stuff where the T&A to prove they're for grown-ups). Silicon Valley actually has a lot to live up to. The cable channel has also been responsible for such classics as Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Larry Sanders Show and continues to break new ground with the likes of Girls and Veep. Part of what makes HBO comedies so special, and this is something evident in Silicon Valley, is that it lets the producers do things they couldn't do on a mainstream network. Not only the rude stuff I mentioned before, but other things. Like Girls, the show has a much more cinematic look than even a single-camera sitcom (and - hallelujah! - there's no laugh track). Like Veep, it can be a little more colourful with its language, but then it can also be a heck of a lot sharper and more incisive than it could be on a channel that, say, relied on the advertising bucks that came from the sort of companies getting gently skewered by this show. And we'll see about the boobs.