Supergirl the TV show

[james_davis_nicoll]

Is it becoming a distaff harem comedy?

Comments

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

UK television is holding back the second half of the season to April. Apparently British viewers don't like the US habit of having the odd break in a series.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that brings back memories, of the Babylon-5 and/or Buffy days. Yeah, our season would start in the fall, they'd start later, but then not have the various breaks, and often show the final episodes before they aired in the US, reversing the usual spoiler concerns.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

Don't think Buffy in the UK ever overtook the US. At least from season 4 onwards, a season would start on Sky TV in January and by May would only be a week behind. But you have to remember that back then, popular shows would often get two UK premieres. Sky - a satellite channel - would get first broadcast rights and then one of the "terrestrial" channels would show the series about a year later. Indeed, Buffy didn't really take off on UK television until the BBC started showing it. Sky had stopped showing it because it wasn't getting the viewing figures they'd like. Once it became popular on the BBC, Sky started again.

Made for problems at British cons when having Buffy panels, as half the audience had only seen what had been on the BBC.

Babylon 5 was an oddity. It's first showing in the UK was on Channel 4, a terrestrial channel. There was no satellite showing. After Channel 4 started showing season 3 in 1996, the American network decided to hold back the showing of the final five episodes and tried to persuade Channel 4 to do the same. Channel 4 said they were not contractually obliged to do so and those episodes went out about six weeks before the US showings. I'd seen a couple of them by the time I was at the 1996 Worldcon in Los Angeles, where one of the treats was JMS showing teasers of the episodes I'd just seen. After that, the US network made sure Channel 4 couldn't show episodes before they were shown in the US.

I think the first show that regularly got shown on a UK channel just days after the US showing was FlashForward in 2009.