Cult Web Series ‘High Maintenance’ Headed to HBO
HBO has picked up the pot-themed comedy web series High Maintenance. Since 2012, the show – which is about a Brooklyn weed dealer played by Ben Sinclair and his peculiar clientele – has been a Vimeo exclusive and has so far run for five “cycles” and 19 episodes. Six new episodes are in production now, and the show’s previous installments will be available later this year on HBO, HBO Go and HBO Now.
Sinclair and his wife, former 30 Rock casting director Katja Blichfeld, created the show; each installment features a different cast of characters who are buying from him. Episodes from the first four cycles are viewable for free on the show’s official website.
“We have been growing this show organically for three years now, and we are elated to bring it into full maturity at HBO, the gold-standard of both online and televised entertainment,” Blichfeld and Sinclair said in a joint statement (pun intended).
“High Maintenance has proven to be one of today’s most highly-acclaimed online comedies,” HBO’s president of programming, Michael Lombardo, said. “We are thrilled to bring this sophisticated and clever series to our HBO audience.”
The couple won a Writers Guild Award earlier this year for the High Maintenance episode “Rachel.”
“We didn’t want to become some ‘stoner’ show,” Blichfeld told Rolling Stone last year. “We don’t really know that [particular] brand of stoner portrayed in movies. The people we know who identify as stoners are actually some of the most productive, successful, creative people we know. High Maintenance looks like the world we live in.”