The premiere of David Simon's new show The Deuce, set in the world of pornography and the hustlers of Times Square in the '70s, suggests a trend for television to go back to a half-remembered decade of excess and recreate it in a way it never really was in its own time.
The Deuce is the second show in as many years produced by HBO and set in the time when cocaine and speed seemed to be as common as flares and Afros.
Vinyl, last year's series about the record industry which had Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger as executive producers, only survived for one season after critical responses were less than enthusiastic and in spite of the strong base of dedicated fans it developed.
Simon's vision of the era is more gritty and street level, quietly focused on period details without overemphasising them in the way that Baz Luhrmann's recently cancelled Netflix show The Get Down - the story of the early days of hip-hop and the golden era of disco - chose to.If you've seen CNN's excellent 2015 documentary series on the decade, you'll have noticed that the producers devoted an entire episode of the eight-part series to the significance of the changes that occurred in television programming in the era.
But the rise of so-called socially conscious programming spearheaded on network television in the US by shows like Norman Lear's All in the Family or M*A*S*H seems in hindsight to be pitifully tame in comparison to what present-day producers are creating.
Sex, violence, drugs, racism, police brutality, political corruption - many of the things that were actually happening on the streets in the '70s, could not be shown on small screens beaming out soap operas and sitcoms to Nixon's "moral majority" in the way they are now.
Showtime's I'm Dying Up Here, set in the world of standup comedy in '70s Los Angeles, makes a valiant attempt to paint a portrait of the world that gave us the talents of stars like Richard Pryor, Gilda Ratner, John Belushi and Andy Kaufman.
It may sometimes be a little too uneven and unsure of its emotional direction, but it reveals more about the era than those comedians' onscreen performances did at the time.
While recent '80s nostalgia shows like Wet Hot American Summer, Red Oaks and The Goldbergs take a more warm-hearted approach that's more Ferris Bueller's Day Off than American Psycho, the '70s seem to be the current favourite period for gritty reality and hard-living political commentary...