Bad News for Sky HD Subscribers

Pose is the latest high-profile series that Sky TV is fast-tracking here for an SD premiere.

Ryan Murphy’s eight-part musical premieres June 3 in the US on the FX network and dramatises life in in 1986 New York, from the ball culture world and rise of the luxury Trump-era universe to the downtown social and literary scene.

Despite Murphy’s previous FX commissions premiering in HD on SoHo, like American Horror Story, Feud and American Crime Story (The People vs OJ Simpson, The Assassination of Gianni Versace), Pose is bypassing the premium drama channel to screen first in SD on OnDemand.

Sky used the same strategy to fast-track Our Cartoon President here before finding space for it in SoHo’s schedule.

No doubt Pose will turn up on SoHo in July but it’s yet another instance of Sky’s bad faith with customers who pay extra for HD reception and SoHo content.

Sky’s good HD value if you watch movies or sport but not if you subscribe for its entertainment, news or documentary channels.

Sky might have the bandwidth space to make Sky 5 or BBC UKTV HD services if it stopped squandering it on pop-up channels.

They’re justified for major sporting events but not as promotional platforms for recycling content many subscribers already have paid to see on the likes of SoHo or Sky Movies.

Examples range from earlier seasons of Westworld and Game of Thrones, to “spotlights” on Snowfall, Taboo, The Deuce and Hap & Leonard, to this month’s Clint Eastwood tribute and next month’s Steven Spielberg season (June 23-25).

Meanwhile, NZ premieres like Born to Kill (UKTV, 9.30 Mondays), The Collection (UKTV, 9.30 Mondays from June 18), Jonathan Creek: Daemon’s Roost (Vibe, 8.30 July 10) and Next of Kin (UKTV, August) are relegated to some of Sky’s most heavily compressed SD channels.

In an interview with Murphy and collaborator Janet Mock, The New York Times described Pose as being “about the intersection of uptown vogue balls in the ’80s and New York’s burgeoning culture of excess“.

Murphy: In a weird way, it’s a Cinderella story — with dark, gritty bits. I wanted to make a version of my ’80s kind of movie, Janet’s ’80s kind of movie, where the leads are people who had previously been marginalised: the daffy sidekicks or the jokes. I wanted to take them from the fringes and make them our heroines. And pull the audience through their stories, which are so human: wanting to be seen and loved, needing a family.

At the show’s NYC premiere earlier this month, Murphy said he wanted to do his part for the LGBTQ community.

Our community is under such attack from this administration. I wanted to put something optimistic and uplifting out there. I just want (viewers) to be entertained and enlightened. I want them to love these characters and realise that all our struggles are the same. We all have dreams and we all want to be loved.

Sky acquired Pose as part of an unprecedented deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution to position the satcaster as the exclusive Kiwi home for all upcoming titles broadcast on the FX network.

They include Trust, Feud: Charles and Diana and the Sons of Anarchy spin-off, Mayans MC.