Vice (TV series)

Vice (stylised as VICE) is a documentary television series created and hosted by Shane Smith of Vice magazine. It covers topics using an immersionist style of documentary filmmaking on Showtime. It premiered on April 5, 2013, on HBO. The show's second season aired in 2014 and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special.

The show originally was executive-produced by Bill Maher, Shane Smith, and Eddy Moretti, and CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria was credited as a consultant.

On May 7, 2014, HBO renewed the series for two more seasons. The 14-episode third season began March 6, 2015, one week after the hour-long "Killing Cancer" aired on February 27. Vice sixth season aired on April 6, 2018. On March 25, 2015, HBO announced Vice's renewal through Season 7.

The show's cancellation was announced on February 1, 2019, making the sixth season its last season on HBO. However, on September 24, the series was picked up by Showtime and resumed on March 29, 2020. On July 30, 2020, the series was renewed for an eighth season that premiered on March 7, 2021. On February 7, 2022, the series was renewed by for its ninth and tenth season. In July 2023, the series was removed from the Showtime streaming app, with Vice News shopping it to other outlets.

Synopsis
The show follows Vice journalists and founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi, and segment hosts Ryan Duffy and Thomas Morton as they went to different parts of the world, interviewing people on political and cultural topics. Subjects included political assassinations, young weapons manufacturers, child suicide bombers, Indian and Pakistani border politics, the Chinese one-child policy, climate change, and bonded laborers in Pakistan's brick kilns, featuring the work of human and labor rights activist Syeda Ghulam Fatima.

Correspondents

 * Suroosh Alvi
 * Krishna Andavolu
 * Ben Anderson
 * Matthew Cassel
 * Vikram Gandhi (2013–2016)
 * Hind Hassan
 * Kaj Larsen (2015–2016)
 * Thomas Morton (2014–2019)
 * David Noriega
 * Simon Ostrovsky (2011–2014)
 * Paola Ramos
 * Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (2016)
 * Alzo Slade
 * Julia Steers
 * Ben C. Solomon
 * Vegas Tenold
 * Gianna Toboni
 * Aris Roussinos (2013–2017)
 * Seb Walker
 * Taylor Wilson (2016–2018)
 * Isobel Yeung

Release and reception
The first episode aired on HBO on April 5, 2013, and was available for free via YouTube. The series is the first televised program for VICE, featuring Vice staff as correspondents.

Politics, culture, and drugs are the main focuses of the Vice series. The show has received both positive and negative reviews because of its unique, provocative presentation and style. Some compare it to a gonzo type of journalism. Maureen Ryan of The Huffington Post wrote a negative review of the show, due to its presentation. Rolling Stone magazine has written that: "It feels a little like your buddy from the bar just happened to be wandering through eastern Afghanistan with a camera crew." In June 2013, the show was covered extensively in mainstream media for documenting a basketball game with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Vice correspondents have filmed from the inside of crack-cooking kitchens in Atlanta to Haitian secret societies in talk of zombie powder.

Vice News Tonight
A nightly spin-off called Vice News Tonight premiered on HBO on October 10, 2016. The program was relaunched in 2020 on the Vice cable network.

Pulled episode
It was reported in June 2023 that Showtime pulled an episode of the series originally scheduled to air on May 28, 2023. The episode, "The Gitmo Candidate & Chipping Away", was scheduled to air four days after Ron DeSantis officially announced he was entering the 2024 Presidential race. In the scrubbed promo for the episode, it described Seb Walker investigating claims that DeSantis witnessed acts condemned by the United Nations as torture during his time as a JAG officer in the Navy at Guantanamo Bay.