Zero Dark Thirty Doco Gets Game of Thrones Slot

The downside of SoHo screening Game of Thrones only hours after HBO is NZ fans are subject to the same interruptions as those in the US.

Because the medieval fantasy is going “on hiatus” for one week next month, Sky will replace it with a documentary about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

SoHo bills Manhunt, which will pre-empt Game of Thrones on May 27, as “a riveting tale of espionage and the moral choices of war, revealed for the first time by the real insiders who led the CIA’s secret war against al-Qaeda and the hunt for Osama bin Laden”.

It focuses on the CIA analysts known as “The Sisterhood” who uncovered al-Qaeda and whose warnings Washington ignored … until after 9/11.

Manhunt is based on Peter Bergen’s book, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden – from 9/11 to Abbottabad, and was officially selected for this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

“Where Zero Dark Thirty introduced audiences to the important role female agents played in this campaign, Manhunt goes further, making it clear just how woman-driven the early analysis of bin Laden’s activities was,” said The Hollywood Reporter.

It dubbed the doco “thoroughy involving” and predicted “interest should be strong for its May HBO airdate”.

Variety tipped Manhunt would “ratchet up the critical chatter surrounding the CIA and ‘enhanced interrogation'” and said this “stylish, coherent rendering of a complex story will likely be branded as the real-life Zero Dark Thirty”.

SoHo also has another one-off special lined-up for next month, Louis CK: Oh My God.

It screened this weekend to top reviews on HBO and will air here after Thrones on May 8.

“Oh My God, taped in February, is a crackerjack show, a polished, manifestly professional performance that couldn’t be more different in tone from Louie, the sitcom,” said the New York Times.

“Both trade in the comedy of indecision and human miserableness, but the stand-up show lacks the series’s air of nervousness and delicious embarrassment.”

Other May highlights include the premiere of the US Queer as Folk, which will screen 9.30 Thursdays from May 30, and box set weekends of The Wire’s fourth season (May 4-5), the first half of The Sopranos’ sixth season (May 11-12), seasons two and three of Hung (May 18-19), and seasons one and two of The Hour (May 25-26).