Remember the notorious late-night HBO show Taxicab Confessions? It debuted back in the mid-90s and followed NYC cabbies as they had unscripted conversations with riders while driving through the heart of the “City That Never Sleeps.” It was a revolutionary program that saw people open up about everything from their romantic partners to the craziest things they’ve seen on the job to utter nonsense. Basically, it was raw, exciting, and chaotic.
Well, I recently went back and started watching Taxicab Confessions with my HBO Max subscription, and the experience was something to behold. It was refreshing, rejuvenating, and wild as I remembered. You know, watching a documentary series first released more than 30 years ago was a trip, and I have some thoughts I need to talk out…
It’s Honestly Refreshing To Hear People Talk To Strangers (Even If The Stories Are Wild)
This isn’t me getting on a high horse, complaining about people not interacting with the world around them (I, too, am prone to losing myself in the embrace of my phone), but it’s so refreshing watching these old episodes of Taxicab Confessions and watching people talking with one another. There are no cellphones or other devices to distract the riders; they just start chatting it up with the cabbies and tell their stories.
Sure, some of these stories are absolutely bonkers and left me with my mouth open in shock, but these people are forming connections with those around them, if only for a few minutes. In the first episode, you have the cop telling some of the most disgusting crime stories of all time, you have a woman trying to flirt with her driver, and you have a group of women going all out while their husbands are at home. Their situations may be different, but they’re all present, they’re all interacting, they’re all sharing stories and creating new ones.
I Just Don’t Know How This Show Would Work Today
I usually hate when someone says something along the lines of “That could never happen today,” but I honestly feel like that’s the case with Taxicab Confessions, at least when it comes to the show’s early days. I don’t mean this in a “This show has already been made before” type of argument, I like to use whenever I’m talking about movies like Blazing Saddles. Instead, it deals more with people being stuck in their own little bubbles in these types of situations.
I don’t know about you, but I often find myself pulling my phone out of habit, like it’s some kind of muscle memory or something. If Taxicab Confessions came out in 2026 instead of 1995, it would just be people with their faces buried in their phones and nothing happening. Well, that and it’d mostly be iber drivers. It would be interesting to see, but I doubt that the rawness and “anything can happen” feeling would be there. But that’s just me.
If you were a fan of the show back in the day or are just now hearing about it, I cannot recommend Taxicab Confessions enough. It’s like opening up a time capsule from mid-90s New York. Now I just need another iconic HBO show, HBO Real Sex, to be brought back and join all the explicit content on HBO Max.
