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Cape Town – M-Net has grabbed the broadcasting rights for the cool new drama series The Last Ship and plans to start broadcasting it from Friday 2 January at 20:30.
While pay-TV broadcasters like StarSat, OpenView HD, e.tv and others complain that M-Net and MultiChoice have exclusive broadcasting rights agreements and "such" all-encompassing exclusive content licensing agreements that they can't get anything, there’s several high-quality TV shows and other TV content nobody secures the rights of for South Africa.
Several of these TV shows go unseen in South Africa with local viewers who are waiting on any local broadcasters to pick up new shows like The Strain, Crossbones, Black Sails, Cedar Cove and When Calls the Heart for instance.
As late as July Channel24 checked and nobody had the rights for The Last Ship.
M-Net has now picked up the drama which will make an excellent addition during a perfect time of the year when viewers, still on holiday, are looking for escapism in the form of spectacle television with big budget execution, intriguing storylines and beautiful people like Grey’s Anatomy’s McSteamy, Eric Dane as a captain and Rhona Mitra as a doctor racing to find a cure to save the world.
M-Net is now planning to use The Last Ship to fill the gap between the third season of Arrow going on hiatus in the United States at the end of the year.
The 10 week gap before Arrow resumes on M-Net on 13 March 2015 will be used to play out the 10 episodes of The Last Ship which is based on William Brinkley's book.
The Last Ship – filmed before the year's big news events – will resonate and feel even more real to viewers.
Before Russia's renewed pan-continental and territorial aggression, before the outbreak of the dreaded Ebola in West Africa soon spreading to America and Europa and through several African nations, The Last Ship filmed and started broadcasting its episodes, dealing with a dreaded disease which quickly spreads across the globe.
The Last Ship follows the post-apocalyptic story of Commander Tom Chandler of the USS Nathan James whose ship and crew is pursued by Russians in a world where 80% of the population has already died from a fast-spreading, super deadly disease.
While Dr Rachel Scott (Rhona Mitra) tries to find a cure in a makeshift laboratory on board the ship, the crew is locked in a deadly quest for survival, water, supplies, food and fuel. The ship races to various locations across the globe searching for whatever can aid Dr Scott in her work.
The show has already been renewed for a second season.
Check out the trailer here:
