{"id":472472,"date":"2026-05-07T05:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472472\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T05:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:57:14","slug":"twelve-of-the-most-expensive-tv-shows-of-all-time-patrick-freynes-cost-benefit-analysis-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472472\/","title":{"rendered":"Twelve of the most expensive TV shows of all time: Patrick Freyne\u2019s cost-benefit analysis \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Citadel returns to Prime Video<\/a> this week. The first season was one of most expensive TV shows ever made. I think that was the elevator pitch, because I can\u2019t tell you what it\u2019s about. Nobody can. <\/p>\n

I watched a few episodes, and all I could think was, \u201cThis cost $300 million for six episodes.\u201d I mean, how many hospital beds would that pay for? Or how many episodes of Room to Improve<\/a> or Morbegs would it pay for? <\/p>\n

Or, even more importantly, how many slap-up meals and embroidered suits and tropical hideaways and vintage guitars would that buy for poor old Patrick, who works so hard and gets so little in return?<\/p>\n

In this article I will be examining some of the most expensive TV shows of all time and doing a cost-benefit analysis.<\/p>\n

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Prime Video)\"TheThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Rory Kinnear as Tom Bombadil and Daniel Weyman as The Stranger. Photograph: Ross Ferguson\/Prime Video <\/p>\n

This is projected to run for five seasons, at which point it will have cost more than $1 billion (probably about what Jeff Bezos, Prime Video\u2019s owner, spends on novelty hats for his pets). JRR Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings, was no slouch in the writing department and wrote a lot of extra Middle Earth-related material: poems, histories, entire languages.<\/p>\n

This makes it all the braver that the showrunners of The Rings of Power, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, have chosen to just invent a bunch of their own stuff. Like all good art, their Lord of the Rings spin-off<\/a> asks important questions instead. Questions like: What if the hobbits were all Irish? Would that be good? Is that something?<\/p>\n

And: What if Sauron, who is just a big, googly eye in the Lord of the Rings books, was, in fact, hunky? I mean, why not? Surely in an archive somewhere there\u2019s a JRR notepad with the words \u201cHunky Sauron?\u201d scrawled inside it.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 review \u2013 The good news is that the wonky Irish accents are goneOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos has also had a 1bit of a makeover since his early days as a baby billionaire, when he was definitively quite googly, like Eye Infection Sauron, and he is now quite buff, like Sexy Sauron. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s just a coincidence.<\/p>\n

The Wheel of Time (also Prime Video)\"TheThe Wheel of Time is adapted from the sprawling fantasy saga by Robert Jordan <\/p>\n

\u201cSure while we\u2019re burning money, let\u2019s do this too,\u201d Bezos no doubt said before funnelling about $400 million of money he found down the back of his couch into this Rosamund Pike-starring<\/a> adaptation of the Robert Jordan fantasy epic. It was cancelled after three series. The Wheel of Time comes for us all, I guess.<\/p>\n

The Crown (Netflix)\"TheThe Crown: Olivia Colman, Imelda Staunton and Claire Foy. Photograph: Justin Downing\/Netflix <\/p>\n

Peter Morgan\u2019s The Crown is also set in a barely believable<\/a> fantasy world (the UK) and features its own share of unbelievable monarchs and googly-eyed monsters. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about a hat. It nonetheless had such a big budget that Morgan couldn\u2019t decide who to hire to play Queen Elizabeth (its heroine) and went for three actors \u2013 Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton \u2013 tying them together with gaffer tape for each scene because that looks better on camera. <\/p>\n

Beautifully made, The Crown didn\u2019t exactly have high stakes. Apart from Andrew, the 20th-century British royals are essentially inanimate symbols of imperial decline. Things happen around them and near them, but they have little agency. <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the six-season arc cost about $260 million. This is, in fairness, significantly cheaper than the actual royal family.<\/p>\n

Stranger Things (Netflix)\"StrangerStranger Things season five: Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair and Noah Schnapp as Will Byers. Photograph: Netflix <\/p>\n

The Duffer brothers\u2019 supernatural teen romp<\/a> reportedly cost between $50 million and $60 million an episode. But what price trapping a whole new cohort of young people inside Gen X-er nostalgia? It\u2019s priceless. <\/p>\n

There are no new ideas in Stranger Things, just very well-made old ideas cadged from, primarily, the Stevens Spielberg and King. Over five series the Duffer brothers imprisoned impressionable young people in a pop-cultural prison assembled from the wreckage of the 1980s, much as Will was imprisoned in the Upside Down in series one.<\/p>\n

Recent Marvel shows (Disney+)\"MarkMark Ruffalo and Tatiana Maslany in She-Hulk <\/p>\n

Episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law<\/a> and Secret Invasion<\/a> really do look a million dollars. Unfortunately, they each reportedly cost somewhere between $25 million and $35 million an episode. Earlier Marvel TV projects were formalistically interesting and visually striking. WandaVision, Hawkeye, I liked those shows. You could see all the money on-screen. With more recent programmes the money is burning just off camera in big metal drums.<\/p>\n

Friends (now on Now)\"FriendsFriends stars Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston. Photograph:Jon Ragel\/Reuters <\/p>\n

Lots of the money paid for big TV shows technically goes to their stars. Famously, towards the end of Friends\u2019 long run, each of the six \u201cFriends\u201d was paid $1 million an episode. <\/p>\n

It was money well spent, really. It was a very satisfying and funny TV show, and it existed at a time when gazillions of people watched terrestrial television. <\/p>\n

In each episode we\u2019d tune in to watch Ross, Rachel, Joffrey, Giggles, Marmaduke and all the rest of the Friends making their way in the big city while battling their ancient enemy Gargamel. (I need to rewatch Friends, tbh.)<\/p>\n

The Sopranos (Now)\"TheThe Sopranos: Tony Sirico and James Gandolfini. Photograph: HBO <\/p>\n

David Chase\u2019s violent, troubling and hilarious drama cost about $2 million an episode. And that was just in the earlier seasons. It was a fortune back in 1999, not just the cost of a suburban house in Clontarf. <\/p>\n

You see, a budget doesn\u2019t just mean explosions and CGI monsters. It also means rehearsal time and retakes and rewrites. In the best-case scenarios a budget gives telly-makers the time to turn something good into something great. <\/p>\n

All that money couldn\u2019t stop David Chase from being a sullen grump, however. Check him out on Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (also on Now), an excellent two-part documentary about the making of that show.<\/p>\n

Apple TV\u2019s weird sci-fi shows\"AdamSeverance: Adam Scott in the sci-fi workplace dramedy. Photograph: Apple TV+ <\/p>\n

Severance<\/a> is a strange workplace dramedy about a bunch of people whose work lives are severed from their lives outside of the office, with horrific, moving and darkly funny results. It costs an estimated $20 million or so an episode.<\/p>\n

Pluribus<\/a> is Vince Gilligan\u2019s eerie show about one of the few people on Earth not absorbed by an upbeat alien hive mind (probably a dig at Netflix). It reportedly costs about $15 million an episode.<\/p>\n

See is set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone \u2013 even its hunky star Jason Momoa \u2013 has gone blind. It is said to cost about $15 million an episode. Ironically, nobody has seen it.<\/p>\n

Check out Apple TV\u2019s roster. There are many more. It\u2019s clear the company\u2019s execs have no interest in making money on their oddball hobby. They publicise these expensive, thoughtful and niche shows by writing something in ogham, putting it in a bottle and throwing it into the sea. <\/p>\n

I love these crazy psychopaths and wish some day to live among them.<\/p>\n

The KLF Burn a Million Quid <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t technically a TV show, but in 1994 Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, from the band KLF, withdrew a million quid \u2013 their only million quid \u2013 and took it to the Scottish island of Jura, where their friend shakily filmed them as they burned it all. They then released this to the public as a film called The K Foundation Burn a Million Quid. <\/p>\n

I feel that was a good use of a budget as any I\u2019ve mentioned here. I do not regret the KLF\u2019s actions (I think they might regret it), but somehow I do regret all the money spent on Citadel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citadel returns to Prime Video this week. The first season was one of most expensive TV shows ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[26675,207275,18,117,19,120549,17,9791,81755,19707,12474,207274,62134,57451,128,96862],"class_list":{"0":"post-472472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-claire-foy","9":"tag-david-chase","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-imelda-staunton","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jeff-bezos","16":"tag-jrr-tolkien","17":"tag-olivia-colman","18":"tag-patrick-freyne","19":"tag-peter-morgan","20":"tag-prime-tv","21":"tag-rosamund-pike","22":"tag-tv","23":"tag-vince-gilligan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116531760449330302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}