Ryan Kenny-
What with exams to sit, essays to write, and lots of other important, meaningful things to be doing with our lives, as students we obviously spend most of our time wasting away watching unreasonable amounts of television. Whether it’s a half-hour long Fade Street-induced cringe, an afternoon spent questioning what we’re doing with our lives as we subject ourselves to the horrors of Jeremy Kyle (or any of the hosts of daytime TV travesties), or an all-nighter binging on a recently acquired box set of DVDs, the allure of TV seems impossible to resist. For those of us lucky enough to have Sky, resisting just got a whole lot harder thanks to the launch of Sky’s latest channel, Sky Atlantic.
“The Home of HBO”. A by-line like that could alone guarantee that launch of Sky Atlantic at the beginning of the month is, to put it simply, probably the best thing to happen to television in Ireland since the launch of Nickelodeon first opened our eyes to the wonders of American television. Seven years, and a reported £150 million in the making, the deal that earned Sky exclusive broadcasting rights to the Emmy-grabbing American network’s vast range of popular, critically acclaimed, and, often utterly brilliant programming should be more than enough to guarantee its success. Winning 101 Emmy nominations in 2010 (more than any other network for the tenth year in a row) HBO is the undisputed leader in American television, and specialises in spectacularly realised, wholly compelling original programmes, produced to a standard matched only by some of the BBC’s best original series and mini-series. A quick scan of their back catalogue reads like, well, exactly what it is, a list of some of the best and most successful television series of the past decade: The Pacific, The Wire, The Sopranos, Sex and The City, Entourage, the list goes on and on. With 40 percent of Sky Atlantic’s content to come from a combination of HBO’s back catalogue and new original programming, it is certain that the new channel will be in a position to provide plenty of great television.
The back-catalogues to which Sky Atlantic has exclusive rights would alone be enough to ensure it was a success, in addition to those mentioned above, it also has access to other iconic series, such as 24, The Sopranos, ER, and The X-Files, to name but a few. However, while these proven hits may provide the foundations for the new channel’s success, it is the new programmes it will be broadcasting that make Sky Atlantic such an exciting prospect.
An example of one such new series is the stylishly produced, phenomenonally successful Mad Men, which will be broadcast exclusively on Sky Atlantic from next season. Winning the rights to the AMC series in a bidding war against the BBC was a major coup for Sky.
Another hotly anticipated new series available only on Sky Atlantic is Martin Scorcese’s majestic Prohibition-era drama, Boardwalk Empire. Breath-takingly ambitious in scale, and boasting the incredibly high production values that seems to characterise every HBO production, Boardwalk Empire has been winning rave reviews from the critics since its launch in the US last September.
Treme is a portrait of life in New Orleans in the aftermath of the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina in 2005. From the creative team of David Simon and Eric Overmyer, who brought us perhaps the best television series of all time in the form of The Wire, this series was always bound to be burdened with incredibly high expectations. Initially met with a more muted reception than the hype which preceded its launch in April of last year, it has nevertheless gone on to win critical acclaim and earn a second season, which, thanks to Sky Atlantic, we will be able to judge for ourselves.
One less high-profile series that’s certainly worth watching when it’s televised next month is the incredibly cool How To Make It In America. This ten episode mini-series follows the lives of twenty-something New Yorkers Ben Epstein and Cam Calderon as they use every scam and hustle they can come up with to try to break into the New York fashion scene, and is guaranteed to have you seriously considering packing up and heading off to make your own way in the greatest city on earth.
With its wide variety of superb programmes already scheduled, and more certainly on the way, Sky Atlantic is bound to be a success, and in its success, a plague to those of us with essays to write and exams to pass.
