True Detective is officially back on 13 January 2019.
Also returning to HBO soon-ish is VEEP for its final season. It depicts this horrific reality:
Charlotte Moore is the BBC’s Director of Content. She recently gave a speech that was designed to highlight the value of the BBC in the face of looming Silicon Valley giants like Netflix:
“I worry that the insatiable greed for data-gathering is actually serving the wrong master… That entire businesses are focused on what they can take from audiences, instead of what they can give back. The BBC is different. Sure, audience data and algorithms are incredibly useful. We can learn so much from what’s working for audiences and what’s not. We can understand how to tailor our services uniquely to them. But I don’t believe any amount of data can tell you what to commission next. Data simply won’t deliver you Car Share, A Very English Scandal, or Murder in Successville.”
Sure, big data players like Netflix won’t deliver you those shows, but it did pump a considerable amount of money into the BBC’s big hit show The Bodyguard.
You didn’t watch Deutschland 83? Well, you missed out on a great German show, but you should probably still be able to find it on a number of streaming services around the place.
The trailer for the follow-up Deutschland 86:
Another lukewarm review for Matthew Weiner’s The Romanoffs, which launches on Amazon later today. This time from CNN.
South Park has this week declared: #CancelTheSimpsons.
I don’t get this one at all. CBS have commissioned a pilot for a TV series based on Secret Six, which is a DC Comics property about villainous characters brought together to work as a team. CBS recently ran a season of Supergirl before jettisoning it over to its youth-skewing sister channel The CW - superheroics don’t quite fit in the CBS line-up. So, if CBS do run with this show, I would anticipate that the superhero/villain aspects of this will be toned down considerably, while the CBS house style of bland-procedural will be ramped up. It seems like a show that will end up satisfying neither fans of the comic, nor the CBS audience.
And finally…
Apple have about 24 shows currently in various stages of production, with a rumoured $1 billion spent on them. The question has been where the tech company is planning on releasing them - it’s starting to look like they will be available for free via the pre-existing Apple TV app.
At least at first. Once Apple build up a strong viewership, they’ll likely move towards launching some subscription content too.
