News culture OCS and HBO it’s over! Here are the iconic series leaving the platform…
Published on 02/01/2023 at 12:00
It’s the new year! And unfortunately for fans of HBO series, it starts under unfortunate auspices. The contract with OCS is now broken, leaving thousands of French orphans of their favorite series (Game of Thrones, Euphoria, True Detective…) and uncertain for the future (House of the Dragon, The Last of Us…).
More than 60 series leave OCS
Over the years, HBO series have established themselves as safe bets. From Sex and the City to House of the Dragon, passing of course by Game of Thrones, True Detective, Chernobyl, The Wire, Big Little Lies and so on, the catalog of the American channel is full of classics. So when we learned that it was HBO who was in charge of the series The Last of Us, there was reason to be reassured. But what was going to be a sweet dream is turning into a nightmare. With us, the only way (or almost) to have access to HBO series is through the channel package established by Orange: OCS. But now, the contract between the two entities ended on December 31.
The loss is abysmal for OCS who finds himself deprived of more than 60 series, most of them acclaimed. The Wire, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, Girls, True Blood, Westworld, Watchmen, Six Feet Under, The Night Of, The Sopranos… You can already say goodbye to all these series and even more. House of TV has listed all of those that have disappeared from the OCS catalog. You can find his list below and unfortunately add Euphoria, From the Earth to the Moon and Spawn to it.
A few series have nevertheless survived this painful break. This is particularly the case for the first season of House of the Dragon, season 3 of Succession and the special episodes of Euphoria. However, this is certainly a reprieve granted to the most recent productions and destined to expire. Curb Season 10 already has an expiration date of January 19. We therefore expect to gradually see the last survivors disappear one by one. Official press releases do not mention any exception. Sad news for those who hadn’t managed to finish watching HBO’s many qualitative series, but also for those who are impatiently awaiting the sequel to House of the Dragon or even the arrival of the adaptation of The Last of Us. A question therefore persists: where can we watch them?
The Last of Us, House of the Dragon… Where will the HBO series be broadcast?
Unfortunately, the question remains unanswered at this time. First, the decision to terminate the contract with Orange was taken in order to prepare for the arrival of the HBO Max platform in France in particular. Yes, but now we learned recently that HBO’s plans had changed. The HBO Max platform will indeed merge with another, Discovery +. And for now, the latter does not exist here either and no specific plans for its export have been revealed. So what are the possibilities?
The Amazon Prime service seems in a good position to inherit HBO series. In the United States, HBO Max is available (for a higher priced subscription) on the streaming platform. We are not immune to seeing the same kind of offers offered here. Canal+ could also retain part of the HBO catalog, through global or specific broadcasting agreements. Nothing has been officially decided yet, but we expect things to become clearer very quickly. The broadcast of the highly anticipated The Last of Us series will begin on January 15 and it is hard to see any solution being offered to us by then.
A propos de House of the Dragon