''Valley of the Boom'' (stylized as ''Valley_of_the_BOOM'') is an American docudrama television miniseries created by Matthew Carnahan that premiered on January 13, 2019, on National Geographic. The series centers on the 1990s tech boom and bust in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

and it stars

Bradley Whitford Bradley Whitford (born October 10, 1959) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman in the NBC television political drama ''The West Wing'' (1999–2006), for which he ...

Steve Zahn Steven James Zahn (; born November 13, 1967) is an American actor and comedian. His film roles include ''Reality Bites'' (1994), ''That Thing You Do!'' (1996), ''Stuart Little'' (1999), '' Shattered Glass'' (2003), ''Sahara'' (2005), '' Chicken Li ...

Lamorne Morris Lamorne Morris (born August 14, 1983) is an American actor, comedian and television personality. He is known for roles such as Winston Bishop in the Fox sitcom ''New Girl'' (2011-2018), Darrin Morris in the National Geographic docudrama ''Vall ...

John Karna John Timothy Karna (born November 18, 1992) is an American actor. He is known for his role as Noah Foster in the first two seasons of the MTV slasher television series ''Scream'', based on the film series of the same name. He is also known ...

, Dakota Shapiro,

Oliver Cooper Oliver Cooper (born December 2, 1989) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Costa in the 2012 comedy film '' Project X'', as Levon on the comedy-drama series ''Californication'', as Wheeler on the cult Amazon series ''Red Oaks' ...

, and John Murphy.

Premise

''Valley of the Boom'' takes a close look at "the culture of speculation, innovation and debauchery that led to the rapid inflation and burst of the 1990s tech bubble. As with its hybrid series ''

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

'', Nat Geo

ses SES, S.E.S., Ses and similar variants can refere to: Business and economics * Socioeconomic status * Scottish Economic Society, a learned society in Scotland * SES, callsign of the TV station SES/RTS (Mount Gambier, South Australia) * SES S.A., ...

select doc elements to support the scripted drama to tell the true inside story of the dramatic early days of Silicon Valley." The series features interviews with many of the people depicted in the dramatized portions of the production in addition to other Internet personalities such as

Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...

and

Arianna Huffington Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (née Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou, el, Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου ; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek-American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of '' Th ...

. Notably absent from these interviews are Netscape co-founder and former vice president of technology Marc Andreessen, who declined to be interviewed, and

Jamie Zawinski Jamie Zawinski (born November 3, 1968), commonly known as jwz, is an American computer programmer, blogger and impresario. He is best known for his role in the creation of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail, Lucid Emacs, Mozilla.org, and XScre ...

. Although the program is primarily focused on the quick rise and fall of three influential technology companies, namely Netscape,

theGlobe.com theGlobe.com was an internet startup founded in 1995

, and Pixelon, the program also highlights smaller companies of that era, such as sfGirl.com.

Cast and characters

Main

James L. Barksdale James Love Barksdale (born January 24, 1943) is an American executive who served as the president and Chief executive officer, CEO of Netscape from January 1995 until the company merged with AOL in March 1999. Early life James Barksdale was born ...

as Darrin Morris *

as Todd Krizelman *

as Marc Andreessen * Dakota Shapiro as Stephan Paternot * John Murphy as Jim Clark *

as Michael Fenne

Recurring

* Raf Rogers as Sean Alvaro *

Chiara Zanni Chiara Zanni (; born July 19, 1978) is a Canadian actress and comedian. She is known for her roles as Amy Ryan on The N series '' About a Girl'' and Maggie Buckman on the CBC series '' Edgemont''. She is also known for her voice-work as Hahli i ...

as Sheila *

Fred Henderson James Frederick "Fred" Henderson (February 1867 – 18 July 1957) was an English socialist writer and journalist, and a Labour Party politician. Early life Born in Norwich, he was the son of James Alexander Henderson, a clothier. He was educated ...

as Mike Egan * Camille Hollett-French as

Tara Hernandez Tara Hernandez is a professional software developer, and veteran open source contributor, who developed procedures and tools at several Silicon Valley companies. She was an early promoter of what came to be known as the Continuous Integration rev ...

* Mike Kovac as Balding Ponytail Coder * Nick Hunnings as Ed Cespedes * Tom Stevens as Phillip *

Siobhan Williams Siobhan Williams is a British-born Canadian actress. Career Williams' first role was as recurring character Jamie Lewis on '' Heartland''. In 2012, she appeared in Disney's '' Radio Rebel'' and played the antagonist, Stephanie Meyers, in 20th Ce ...

as Jenn * Vincent Dangerfield as Lee Wiskowski * Jacob Richter as Dan Goodin * Hilary Jardine as Patty Beron * Paul Herbert as Paul Ward * Carey Feehan as Robert Dunning * Donna Benedicto as Kate

Guest

Keegan Connor Tracy Keegan Connor Tracy (born December 3, 1971) is a Canadian actress and author. She is best known for her roles as Audrey Malone in the Showtime comedy-drama series '' Beggars and Choosers'' (1999–2000), the Blue Fairy in the ABC fantasy drama ...

Rosanne Siino Rosanne Siino is the retired former Vice President of Communications for Netscape (Communications Corporation). Siino is responsible for crafting the 1990s message that "the web is for everyone", as well as making the pivotal decision to turn Ma ...

("Part 1: print ("hello, world")") *

Luvia Petersen Luvia Petersen is a Canadian actress best known for her role on the TV series '' Continuum and Ghost Wars'', where she was part of the main cast. Petersen is also co-owner of Vancouver tattoo studio Liquid Amber Tattoo & Art Collective, which open ...

Mary Meeker use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , nationality = American , citizenship = , education ...

("Part 1: print ("hello, world")") * Michael Patrick Denis as Thomas Reardon ("Part 2: pseudocode") * Jesse James as Barry Moore ("Part 4: priority inversion") *

as Jenn ("Part 4: priority inversion") * Doug Abrahams as Ace Greenberg ("Part 4: priority inversion") * David Stuart as Pit Boss ("Part 4: priority inversion") * Connor Tracy as

("Part 5: segfault") * Rachel Hayward as Joyce ("Part 5: segfault") * Tom Stevens as Phillip ("Part 6: fatal error")

Episodes

Production

Development

On November 15, 2017, it was announced that National Geographic had given the production a series order consisting of six episodes. Executive producers are set to include Matthew Carnahan, Arianna Huffington, Jason Goldberg, Brant Pinvidic, and David Walpert. Carnahan is also expected to act as showrunner for the series and direct as well. David Newsom is co-executive producer and will lead the non-scripted unit of the production. Joel Ehninger is expected to act in the role of producer. Production companies involved with the series include STXtelevision and Matthew Carnahan Circus Products. On September 24, 2018, it was announced that the series would premiere on January 13, 2019.

Casting

On March 16, 2018, it was announced that

, Dakota Shapiro, and

had joined the series' main cast.

Filming

Principal photography for the series began on March 26, 2018 in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and was expected to conclude by May 28, 2018.

Release

Marketing

On July 24, 2018, the first trailer for the series was released.

Premiere

On September 21, 2018, the series held its world premiere during the second annual Tribeca TV Festival in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Following a screening, a conversation took place featuring members of the cast and crew including creator Matthew Carnahan, actors

, and real-life subject Stephan Paternot, founder of

theGlobe.com theGlobe.com was an internet startup founded in 1995

Distribution

The series will premiere globally on National Geographic in 171 countries and 45 languages. STXtelevision will distribute the series in China.

Reception

The series has been met with a mixed response from critics upon its premiere. On the review aggregation website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the series holds a 67% approval rating with an average rating of 5.85 out of 10 based on 15 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "A visual collage of dot com history, ''Valley of Boom'' proves to be just as sprawling and ramshackle as the docuseries' subject."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 58 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Valley of the Boom 2019 American television series debuts 2019 American television series endings Documentary television series about computing English-language television shows National Geographic (American TV channel) original programming Nerd culture Science docudramas