SoHo Sequel a November Pillar

Sky’s SoHo channel will crown its first anniversary with the NZ premiere of World Without End, the $46 million, eight-hour sequel to The Pillars of the Earth.

It will air 8.30 Sundays from November 4 and is set 200 years after the original, when one woman’s challenge to the Church and the Crown unfolds amid natural disasters, plague and war.

The new cast includes Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), Ben Chaplin (Mad Dogs), Rupert Evans (Emma), Tom Weston-Jones (Spooks), Charlotte Riley (The Take) and Miranda Richardson.

Unlike the original, which took nearly two years to screen here, World Without End has only just had its international premiere, on Canada’s version of SoHo, and is soon to air in the UK and the US; SoHo will precede it with a box set weekend re-run of Pillars on November 3/4.

Even better news for crime drama connoisseurs is SoHo’s acquisition of the five-part BBC thriller, Line of Duty.

Set in the fictional police anti-corruption unit, it’s described as a cat-and-mouse thriller that takes a probing look into modern policing and corruption.

Written by Bodies’ Jed Mercurio, it stars Adrian Dunbar (Ashes to Ashes), Lennie James (The Walking Dead), Martin Compston (Sweet Sixteen), Vicky McClure (This Is England), Neil Morrissey (Men Behaving Badly) and Gina McKee (The Borgias).

It earned mixed reviews in the UK but most critics echoed The Guardian’s verdict: “Line of Duty’s twisted narrative is torture to watch – but I’m hooked.”

Line of Duty will air 8.30 Tuesdays from November 20, following an on-demand (in HD) and iSky (SD) preview of the premiere from November 6.

Otherwise, November on SoHo is notable only for the channel’s HD premieres of the 2003 miniseries, Angels in America, which will screen 8.30 Fridays from November 16, and season five of The Sopranos (9.30 Mondays, from November 12) while ill-fated horse-racing drama Luck will re-run 8.30 Saturdays from November 10.

SoHo will bookend the November 6 US presidential election with re-runs of the Franklin D Roosevelt drama, Warm Springs (November 2), and the Sarah Palin campaign expose, Game Change (November 9), and will air back-to-back as box set weekends seasons one of The Newsroom (November 10/11), four of The Sopranos (November 17/18) and eight of Weeds (November 24) as well as the miniseries, The Promise (November 25).