SoHo’s to Die For in June
May 17, 2017 
13 Comments
Next month Sky’s premium drama channel will premiere the latest Showtime drama series, I’m Dying Up Here (9.30 Tuesdays from June 13).
It’s the stand-up version of HBO’s misjudged Vinyl, set in the 1970s when the likes of Richard Pryor, Jay Leno and David Letterman were dominating the Hollywood circuit — but with the focus still on those still trying to make it big.
Based upon William Knoedelseder’s book of the same name, and executive produced by Jim Carrey, it stars Melissa Leo (The Fighter, Treme), Ari Graynor (Fringe), Clark Duke (The Office), Michael Angarano (The Knick), RJ Cyler (Vice Principals), Erik Griffin (Blunt Talk) and Jake Lacy (Girls).
Meanwhile, current stand-up sensation TJ Miller, of Silicon Valley, can be seen in his first HBO special, TJ Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous, on June 29 at 9.30, following the season finale of Veep (which won’t air June 8 because it will be on hiatus in the US).
Returning for new SoHo runs next month will be Line of Duty (8.30 Sundays from June 18), Animal Kingdom (9.30 Wednesdays from June 28), Orphan Black (8.30 Fridays from June 16) Hap and Leonard (9.30 Mondays from June 12) and Fear the Walking Dead, which will be fast-tracked from the US (5.00 Mondays from June 5).
June will also see the launch of another Game of Thrones pop-up channel, ahead of season seven’s July 17 premiere.
The first six will air back-to-back from June 26-July 2 on channel 210.
Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier '/' in /home/customer/www/screenscribe.net/public_html/wp-content/themes/headlines/includes/theme-comments.php on line 66
May 17, 2017 at 5:02 pm
I’m so looking forward to the return of Twin Peaks on Monday 🙂
Trevor, will you binge watch the classic Twin Peaks in anticipation of Eps 1-4 on Monday?
I may do, I have got the Twin Peaks Blu-ray boxset but at the moment I’m busy watching my True Blood Blu-ray boxset which I got from Mighty Ape as a daily special, what a brilliant show 🙂
Just canned my SoHo subscription. Will miss the HBO shows as they won’t pop up on Netflix but can access them on Blu-ray etc. The non-HBO shows SoHo has like Fargo have made their way to Netflix and I’ll just catch up with them that way. I love Last Week Tonight but the best bits of that are usually online by 5pm Monday. I would have loved Sky to show it ‘live’ with the States but never happened.
Clint, you’ve succinctly encapsulated the challenges facing a pay platform like Sky post-Netflix. It should have been quicker off the mark with premium drama channels, when it became clear that edgy cable fare wasn’t working on free-to-air. Instead, it opted for only one, SoHo, and put it out of reach of many by charging a double pay-wall: basic Sky sub plus a SoHo sub (and then the HD Ticket on top of those). Sky could easily have launched a top premium drama channel for the best of HBO and Showtime (ie SoHo) and a second-tier sister channel for lesser but still quality fare (Bates Motel, Into the Badlands, series like Turn and Manhattan, which surfaced briefly on Neon before it went HD). Yes, it would have cost Sky a bundle but it would have been a better long-term investment than just pumping out shabby SD channels crammed with FTA re-runs and rejects.
SoHo is our absolute favourite channel with a number of great shows. I hope that SoHo continues to get plenty of awesome shows in the future.
Even if SoHo was half the channel that it is, it would still stand out amid the wasteland of dross on Sky. Even so, its fortunes are hugely dependent on HBO’s output, which has been shaky of late compared to what some of its rivals and Netflix and Amazon are commissioning.
Agreed Mark. It’s our favourite channel, too. Spending a paltry $2.50/week to watch 6 hours/week of entertainment is a no-brainer. When I point out the cup of coffee a week to watch GoT it makes perfect sense to the in-laws (and then they seem to find a screed of other quality drama, too – go figure). And, Philip, if HBO threw as much money at product as Netflix does it’d have as many quality hours of product, too. But I think its profitability would suffer considerably.
SoHo’s a brilliant channel in terms of quality content. My beef is with Sky’s high rotation programming and charging regime. If you subscribe to Sky to watch SoHo in HD, it costs considerably more than $2.50 a week. And even though it’s a premium channel, subscribers still have to endure Sky promotions like Sky Perks popping up during a programme. At least Sky’s largely dropped its butchering of end credits to promote next week’s episode or another coming attraction.
If I didnt have HD for sport then I wouldnt bother with HD for SoHo. Drama doesnt get significant utility value to justify paying extra for HD IMHO. When I have to watch a catch-up episode on ThreeNow or TVNZOD do I notice the quality difference – sure but not such that I wished I could pay to see it in HD. But if I allocated all my HD cost to Soho then $5/week for 6 hours/week entertainment. Still seems a no-brainer. If I wanted to replicate that by buying a HD boxset how much is it costing me per viewing hour? [And what are the chances of me rewatching a series? I’ve stop buying DVD’s cos I simply overestimated the number of times that I thought I’d view them. But thats an aside.] But Duke for sport in SD – ugh. Happy to pay Sky the extra cash for sport in HD. There is no question it’s worth it. As for Sky Perks etc – I had to think the last time I noticed popups or watermarks, I guess I just tune them out.
If I subscribed to Sky for its sports package (13 HD channels, including pop-ups), I’d be happy to pay just $2.50 a week for SoHo, too. But unless you’re on a movies and/or sports package, Sky subscribers get very poor HD value, with only SoHo, occasional pop-ups, the quasi-HD The Zone and the free-to-air majors (which have to be carried in their native signals, anyway) being in HD. I couldn’t disagree more re the value of drama in HD. The SD vs HD difference between a Taboo or a Fargo is night and day. If drama is your priority, combined with the best possible picture quality, Amazon and Netflix offer better value and PQ, with most of their commissions in 4K.
And yet I know people who dont think it’s worth the extra $$ to get sport in HD – to which I couldnt disagree more. So it’s down to the individual to ascribe the marginal utility of HD on their valued content.
Agree with Philip, Amazon is tops for video quality, sound is excellent, too, now that they have switched to Dolby Digital +.