PORTLAND, Ore — With millions of people staying home, HBO has announced the premium channel is making almost 500 hours of programming available for free, beginning Friday, April 3. That means you don’t need to subscribe to HBO or its streaming platforms to watch. But before you make plans to spend the weekend binge-watching “Game of Thrones,” here’s what will be (and won’t be) available, and what you need to do to watch it.
According to HBO, the programming can be streamed without a subscription by downloading the HBO Now or HBO Go apps. You can also watch the free content online, at HBONOW.com or HBOGO.com. The announcement from HBO adds that content included in this #StayHomeBoxOffice package “will also be made available for free via participating distribution partners’ platforms in the coming days.”
So what’s included? Well, don’t go looking for current series, such as “Westworld,” or the blockbuster hit, “Game of Thrones.” But even if the selection doesn’t include some of HBO’s most talked-about originals, and does include some items viewers probably weren’t clamoring for, there are some classic series and outstanding documentaries.
Here’s what is included in the HBO content you can stream without a subscription:
Original TV series: “Ballers,” the sports comedy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (5 seasons); “Barry," the dark comedy starring Bill Hader as a hitman who wants to be an actor (2 seasons); “Silicon Valley," the witty comedy about the high tech world (6 seasons); “Six Feet Under,” the uneven but sometimes terrific drama about a family running a funeral home, (5 seasons); “The Sopranos," the all-time classic that helped launch our era of outstanding TV, (7 seasons); “Succession,” the hugely entertaining drama (with comedy) about a Rupert Murdoch-like media tycoon and those surrounding him (2 seasons); “True Blood,” the sexy vampire supernatural drama (7 seasons); “Veep,” the acerbic political satire (7 seasons); and “The Wire,” another all-time classic drama about Baltimore cops, drug dealers, educators, politicians and systems that don’t work (5 seasons).
Documentary series and documentaries: “The Apollo”; “The Case Against Adnan Syed”; “Elvis Presley: The Searcher”; “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter”; “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley”: “Jane Fonda in Five Acts”; “McMillion$”; “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality”; “United Skates”; and “We Are the Dream: The Kids of the MLK Oratorical Fest.”
Movies: There’s also a pretty random collection of 20 Warner Bros. movies, including “Arthur”; “Arthur 2: On the Rocks”; “Blinded By the Light”; “The Bridges of Madison County”; “Crazy, Stupid, Love”; “Empire of the Sun”; “Forget Paris”; “Happy Feet Two”; “Isn’t It Romantic?”; “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”; “Midnight Special”; 'My Dog Skip"; “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase”; “Pan”; “Pokémon Detective Pikachu”; “Red Riding Hood”; “Smallfoot”; “Storks”; “Sucker Punch”; and “Unknown.”
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-- Kristi Turnquist
kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist
This article was originally published by the Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving health issue.
