EXCLUSIVE. M-Net grabs The Last Ship with Eric Dane; excellent new drama series set to start on M-Net on 2 January at 20:30.

Your're reading it here first. 

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 has 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.

Any could have grabbed The Last Ship. They just didn't. For months.

And now M-Net has picked it up, meaning that DStv subscribers will be able to watch this engrossing new series in high definition (and most probably on DStv Catch Up).

As late as July this year TV with Thinus checked and lamented how no South African broadcaster has ye bothered to grap The Last Ship, a new drama series with Grey's Anatomy's "McSteamy" Eric Dane - a TV show which was anyone's for the taking if they're willing to pay for it.

M-Net is now planning to use The Last Ship - during an excellent time of the year when people want big, escapism television - to fill the gap between the third season of Arrow going on hiatus in the United States.

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.

Even more unintentionally great is how even more relevant and perfect The Last Ship - filmed before the year's big news events - will resonate and feel 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.

Now The Last Ship will feel very real to viewers with the series following 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 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, fuel - and to race 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.

MISSING SHIP. Can you believe this? Nobody has grabbed hot new drama The Last Ship for South Africa. Who will get it?

You're reading it here first.

With South Africa's TV market hotting up as more and more want-to-be-premium broadcasters and TV channels duke it out to bring the best content to viewers (and quicker!) this hasn't happened in a while: a red-hot new TV show which none of them have!

South African viewers are missing out on the new drama The Last Ship and TV with Thinus can reveal the field is wide open - since no-one's secured the broadcasting rights ... yet.

Two (great) episodes in in the United States of The Last Ship, South African viewers cannot see it and can't be sure yet that they will.

The post-apocalyptic drama with Eric Dane as captain leading a rag-tag crew looking for a cure after the world's population has been decimated, has not been picked up by any of the big channel makers having store front windows in South Africa.

Imagine a bit of JAG, crossed with The Walking Dead (just not as scary) and Helix set on a ship and you've got The Last Ship.

The Last Ship meanwhile set a new high water mark as far as viewership is concerned - its the biggest new pay-TV series in America, grabbing the highest number of viewers of any new subscription television show in 2014.

M-Net tells me they definitely don't have the rights to The Last Ship (yet) - a show that would fit in perfectly with its schedule as a high definition, adventure, clean yet scary, explosion-filled drama and cleverly serialised (secret Russian onboard!) show.

Sony tells me they definitely don't have the rights to The Last Ship (yet) - keep in mind that Sony Entertainment Television (SET) is the channel that got the great yet cancelled Last Resort.

Fox International Channels Africa (FIC Africa) tells me that they don't have the rights to The Last Ship (yet) - meaning the channel distributor that brings brings excellent post-apocalyptic dramas like The Walking Dead and Falling Skies to South African viewers quickly on channels like FOX and FX has not secured this excellent new companion drama.

So. Who will be first to show The Last Ship to South African pay-TV viewers on one of their TV channels?

TV TRAILERS. The hottest new American TV shows from the new upcoming American TV season you can get ready for.

Just like you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can't (and shouldn't) judge a new TV show by its trailer - they're deliberately made to pack as much razzle and dazzle into that 30 seconds or a minute to entice viewers, ad buyers and TV critics as they can.

With that said, some of the new upcoming American TV dramas of the new upcoming TV season is America looks simply amazing. I've looked at a lot, and here's my personal interesting and exciting ones, shows which I will definitely be tracking.

May M-Net and Fox International Channels (FIC) PLEASE grab these amazing-looking shows as quickly as they can, and start showing it as soon as it starts in America.


AMAZING! ★★★★★ I've already reported in July 2012 on The Last Ship, the new action adventure thriller TV drama based on William Brinkley's book. In this post apocalyptic TV drama, the crew of an American naval vessel are the last untouched people on earth after a mysterious virus spreads across the globe. Nuclear explosion! Chaos! McSteamy is back on television with a first season of definitely 10 episodes of The Last Ship.  This trailer looks amazing.



AMAZING! ★★★★★ Another incredibly imaginative and fully futuristic-looking new TV drama is Almost Human, where a cop with problems is paired with a quirky android with problems. You can see a bit of Fringe in it. You can see a bit of I, Robot in it. What's not to love? Oh, and J.J.Abrams is producing.


AMAZING! ★★★★★ Dracula with that sex-obsessed defiant Jonathan Rhys Meyers looks ... aaaaaaaaah-mazing. my first impressions is of a "grown-up" The Vampire Diaries crossed with Sanctuary. It looks epic, with lots of backstory and mythical mysteries.

Sex fiend Jonathan Rhys Meyers Dracula comes to London, posing as an American entrepreneur who wants to bring modern science to the stodgy Victorian city. But he also wants revenge on people who've betrayed him centuries ago. Of course set against the backdrop of a love story and "unquenched" love.


GREAT! ★★★ "Don't touch Lola!" Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is another hot-looking new drama series coming from Joss Whedon. In this comic book morphing to television series, agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) puts together a small team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to handle strange new cases.


INTRIGUING PREMISE! ★★★ In Sleepy Hollow (okay SPOILER! but they give it away in the promo) the headless horseman is actually one of the four mythical horsemen of the apocalypse.

Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is woken up centuries later in our time in the town of Sleepy Hollow. He was last alive in George Washington's time. He made him a promise. There were two witches covens - one evil one good. Now Ichabod has to hunt down the headless horseman who've also "reawaken" (without a head) and is killing people.


SIMPLY AMAZING! ★★★★★ The world's most wanted man, has just surrendered..." [what happened to the more ominous-always "In a world ..."] James Spader is back on television is the good-looking Blacklist. It looks a little bit Person of Interest crossed with Hannibal rip-off, but veeeeery excelently done, since that James Spader delivery just drips with delicious melodrama (as usual) - especially when locked in a glass box due to perceived dangerous and unknown tendencies.

LOOKING GOOD! ★★★★ A bit Voyagers!, a bit Quantum Leap, a bit Sliders, a bit Stardust, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is a spin-off from Once Upon a Time.in which Alice is broken out of a mental asylum to return to Wonderland to look for her lost love she thought was dead. May she not like the old lady in Titanic end up throwing the jewel of the heart of the ocean courage into the ocean in the end.

BACK TO THE FUTURE. The new upcoming TV season will be all about the world of tomorrow as futuristic dramas dominate.

There's quietly a Revolution that's been happening behind-the-scenes of the television industry, which means that the new upcoming TV season and a lot of brand-new shows that South African viewers will be seeing, will all be about the future world of tomorrow.

With the success of the new TV drama Revolution (on M-Net Series, returning in America on 25 March and returning to M-Net Series for episode 11 on Thursday 4 April) TV channels and producers are working on the biggest number of futuristic TV dramas and science fiction shows depicting some form of "the world of tomorrow" that will start to roll out at the same time on general television later in 2013.

The big lesson of 2012 was, of course, that the Mayas were wrong. The other lesson (and because Hollywood loves to imitate success) is that viewers are in love with seeing utopian and dystopian visions of the future.

There is a whole crop of awesome looking films coming up in 2013 about future Earths (Oblivion (the image above), After Earth etc.) but it's going to be on television where the trend of futuristic versions of our planet is going to become an inescapable programming strand.

Of course existing shows with this theme there already are, such as Revolution, The Walking Dead, Falling Skies and Continuum which are all doing well, just as the little watched, yet critically acclaimed Fringe came to and end. But there's a whole lot of new ones underway.

A lot of pilot episodes are currently being shot, any number of which could become full new TV series. And a number of shows will already be guaranteed full first season series like Under the Dome and Defiance. Step back a moment, and look at the overall picture to see the important trend:

I already reported on the pilot episode being shot for The Last Ship in which a nuclear submarine and its crew become all that's left of humanity after a nuclear war as they embark on a voyage looking for a new home, since every single landmass they approach is enveloped by a dense radioactive cloud.

I've told you about The Hundred, a pilot episode for a new youth centered show set in a post-apocalyptic Earth which takes place a century after mankind has destroyed civilization. The first step to "colonize" Earth is to send 100 juvenile delinquents back to Earth in a spaceship and to a planet which has radically changed.

Oxygen which will be almost like the South African movie District 9, will revolve around a future Earth where a group of alien visitors are kept in isolation, because we don't know what they might really be up to.A group of alien boys are however integrated into a suburban high school, and then one of the aliens has a romance with a human girl.

Then there's The Selection, set 300 years in the future (and like the movie The Hunger Games) is about a hardworking young woman who is chosen by lottery to partake in a competition to become the nation's next queen.

Defiance anyone? Odds are that show is going to be huge, since it's launching worldwide with a full first season at the same time as a global online video game. It will be interesting to see which South African broadcaster on TV channel on DStv or TopTV bring this TV show to viewers while its hot.

Defiance is set - ta-da - in the future in what remains, or is now the transformed St. Louis where mankind and aliens live together (not peacefully) and fight bigger aliens after a devastating war destroyed much of what used to be civilization.

The Returned is going to look to replicate some of The Walking Dead magic. Yes, with the zombie drama doing exceptionally well worldwide, The Returned is about zombies who are able to live normal lives - but maybe not for long. In this TV drama about a future Earth, in this post-zombie world where the infected live normal lives, their retroviral drug is running out...

Another big one coming up in 2013 is S.H.I.E.L.D. Yep, this is an Avengers-themed TV effort hoping to bring some Marvel action heroes to television.

Stephen King's book Under the Dome is becoming a full already approved TV series as well this year - a small town is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world. Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks Television is in on this one as the residents trapped inside the invisible force field has to figure out what is going on and how to escape.

J.J. Abrams is working on a new as-yet-untitled drama for 2013 as well - yes, set in the future. In this futuristic cop drama, where all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids.

Shonda Rhimes is working on robots and a future world too for 2013. She's already looking after Grey's Anatomy and Scandal (retitled as The Fixer in South Africa) but now she's going to produce an android science fiction thriller as her next new TV drama entitled MILA 2.0.

MILA 2.0 based on Debra Driza's book is about a young woman who discovers that she is a Mobile Intel Life-like Android or Mila - an experiment in artificial intelligence created by the U.S. government and her scientist mother, who kidnapped her when she was found to have human emotions.

Delirium is coming in 2013 as a pilot episode and possibly a TV series. That too is set in a futuristic dystopian world where love is illegal and gets eradicated with a ... special procedure. Just 95 days before her scheduled treatment, the lead character Lena Holoway falls in love.

And finally, who knows? Not that Disney bought George Lucas' LucasFilm Ltd and the Star Wars franchise in 2012, could Disney finally be making that long gestating live action Star Wars TV drama of which all the scripts have already been written but which required a big budget? Will it finally get the green light in 2013 to become a real TV show?

The Last Ship to be filmed as a pilot episode for a possible post apocalyptic new action drama series.

The Last Ship, the novel by William Brinkley, will be filmed as a pilot episode for a possible pick-up as a new drama series.

The post apocalyptic action drama series is based on the popular novel in which an American nuclear naval destroyer is basically almost all that's left of humanity and civilization after a global catastrophe which has destroyed the majority of the Earth's population.

The crew and everyone onboard traverse the seas on a new voyage to look for a new home, since every single landmass they approach, is enveloped by a dense radioactive cloud (meaning every place on earth was bombed during nuclear war).

Michael Bay from Transformers is the executive producer. "The book The Last Ship is a gripping page-turner that has all the makings of a terrific television drama, including a great premise, memorable characters, intense situations and heart-racing action. We look forward to working with Michael Bay and The Last Ship's outstanding production team," says Michael Wright, the head of programming in a press statement from the TNT channel which might pick up The Last Ship to series.

Coming sooner to viewers, and of course already picked up as a new TV drama series, is The Last Resort about an American nuclear submarine whose entire crew defects when ordered to fire a missile and wants to start their own country on an island