The goalposts of streaming have been shifted yet again after Warner Bros. struck a deal to license some of its biggest and most popular shows from the back catalogue to Netflix, allowing one of its biggest rivals in the ongoing war to secure bumper viewership figures thanks entirely to an assist from the competition.
While the five seasons of Issa Rae’s sitcom Insecure was a fairly inauspicious start – at least in terms of the widely-popular comedy’s status among the cultural pantheon – there are countless heavy hitters coming down the pipeline including Dwayne Johnson’s Ballers, as well as the heavyweight collaborations between Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in Band of Brothers and The Pacific.
As if that wasn’t enough, What’s on Netflix has additionally revealed that one of HBO’s most quietly influential episodic exclusives of all-time is on its way to international subscribers, with all seven seasons and 80 episodes of True Blood gearing up to make the jump from its home platform.
Even though the wheels most definitely came off towards the end, the supernatural fantasy’s importance to the Peak TV era should never be overlooked, because the explosion in bloody romance, sexually-charged content, and horror-tinged projects being rolled out in increasing numbers to virtually every network in the mid-to-late 2000s can be attributed in at least one form or another to the success of Alan Ball’s twisted slice of Southern Gothic.
True Blood might not be for everyone, but its status as an unheralded game-changer is inarguable, something Netflix subscribers are set to discover firsthand when it makes its way to their device of choice in the near future, although no exact date has been confirmed as of yet.