Lightning-Fast Lightbox Premieres in October

Next month Lightbox will fast-track the latest seasons of Mr Robot and Chance within hours of their US premieres but fans of Trans-parent will have to endure a month-long gap between its US and NZ streaming.

Lightbox also is holding back the Channel 4 sci-fi anthology Electric Dreams until October 18.

The Philip K Dick (Blade Runner) adaptation went to air on Sunday in the UK, where Broadcast magazine reports it made “an underwhelming start” in the ratings.

Reviews were mixed, ranging from “it seemed dated” (The Times) and “didn’t have quite enough resonant things to say” (The Telegraph) to “terrific, thoughtful, thought-provoking and compelling” (The Guardian).

Channel 4 is screening the series in two halves, with the second batch of four episodes scheduled for early next year.

Even though all but one of the first six will have aired by the time it launches here, Lightbox will stream Electric Dreams weekly rather than binge-release.

Says a Lightbox spokesperson about the rationale behind the weekly drops:

It was a hard thought-out strategic plan because the UK broadcast schedule wasn’t confirmed until just a couple of weeks ago and rather than make a knee-jerk reaction to get content on the platform within that short time frame (which we can and often do), we made the decision on this occasion to delay the release here in NZ by four weeks to allow time to thoughtfully prepare a marketing campaign for the show and ultimately roll out the best customer experience.

However, the October 12 season premieres of Mr Robot and Chance will be available to stream virtually the same day as the US.

And despite being an Amazon original, the latest season of Transparent will be exclusive to Lightbox in this territory, where it can be viewed from October 28.

Lightbox also is picking up ex-TVNZ series Girlfriends Guide to Divorce (October 6) and Mum (October 19), The Zone’s Channel Zero (October 21) and the reality series Inside Manchester’s Midland Hotel (October 24).

The last of its October premieres is Snapped: She Made Me Do It (October 10), a 2016 true-crimes series that profiles women accused of manipulating men to break the law.