Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest effort to get a little more financial blood from a stone that should, hypothetically, be absolutely chock-full of the stuff: Its massive, century-old library of films and TV shows. CEO David Zaslav, who’s spent the last four years running one of the planet’s premiere movie and television studios like one of those mattress retailers who are always desperately threatening to go out of business, announced that the company would begin re-running some of its HBO programs on its less, let’s say, prestigious cable networks. Now, the first move in that effort has come, because Hacks and True Detective: Night Country now get the massive privileges of calling themselves TBS and TNT shows, respectively.
And, yeah, if you squint, these kind of make sense. Of the current HBO comedies, Hacks is probably the least overtly vulgar, while also being the most award-winning and prestigious. (Not that Jean Smart and Hannah Einbender don’t go blue as hell in the very funny series, but there’s nothing as extreme in its DNA as you might get in 30 seconds of Edi Patterson dialogue on The Righteous Gemstones.) And TNT has a basically bottomless appetite for TV shows about hunting down murderers, while Night Country has been heralded as one of the best seasons of True Detective since the first. (Also, given how many times we’ve watched Silence Of The Lambs on this network, we have to assume they’re pretty in the bag for Jodie Foster.) Neither show embraces the episodic storytelling that we associate with a standard “it’s Sunday and moving from the couch is difficult” TBS or TNT binge, but they can kind of, sort of, fake it.
As to logistics, both shows are getting a primetime treatment: Hacks will air episodes two per night, starting on April 3. (Variety says the run will only go until the 7th, but also that it’ll cover all three seasons, which doesn’t math out; that pace would cover just the first season of the series.) Night Country, meanwhile, will start running on TNT on March 28. It’s only got six episodes to burn through, so less logistical overhead there.
This isn’t the first time Warner Bros. has shopped out HBO content to itself; Sex And The City moved into cable syndication a long time ago, while TBS and TNT both previously played host to Silicon Valley and True Blood, respectively. However, all of those airings happened after the shows had stopped producing new episodes for HBO. Also, just go ahead and assume that all of this is going to get heavily edited for the delicate sensibilities of regular cable viewers.
