HBO is bringing a few of its international series to the US, including two from HBO Europe: The Pact The Pack from Poland and Wasteland from the Czech Republic.
The Pack The Pact and Wasteland aren’t the first series produced by HBO Europe to be shown in the United States.
The first was Umbre, the fantastic Romanian crime drama (a remake of the Australian Small Time Gangster) that Acorn TV premiered in the US two years ago. Season 1 follows Relu (Serban Pavlu, Scarred Hearts), a cab driver by day whose side gig as a money collector for the mob by night ends up exposing his double life and endangering the lives of himself and his family. (Season 2, which presumably picks up soon after that twist in the Season 1 finale, premieres on HBO Europe channels next month; fingers crossed Acorn TV will bring it to the US, too!)
The second was Mamon, which arrived in the US on Amazon Prime last December and is the Czech remake of the hit Norwegian thriller Mammon. The Czech series follows Petr Vlcek (Matej Hádek, Vyprávej), a journalist who exposes bribery and corruption in the state-run energy company run by his brother — a story that results in the deaths of his brother and others, and pushes the reporter to carry out his own investigation to discover the truth.
HBO hasn’t announced the US premiere dates for The Pact The Pack and Wasteland yet, but what is known is that these shows will be available to HBO subscribers on HBO GO, HBO NOW, and HBO on Demand.
Here’s a bit of info about each series:
The Pact (Pakt)
CORRECTION: HBO is bringing Seasons 1 and 2 of The Pact (Pakt) to the US, not The Pack (Wataha), as noted earlier. The Pact, which had been streaming on the ad-supported Tubi TV until a few months ago, is the Polish version of Mammon and Mamon. It stars Marcin Dorocinski (Spies of Warsaw) as journalist Piotr Grodecki, who exposes fraud in the multinational company where his brother works and gets himself enmeshed in a scandal involving politics and big business.
The Pack (Wataha) (Poland)
This action-crime drama is set (and filmed mostly on location) in the remote Bieszczady Mountains on the Polish-Ukrainian border — the external border of the European Union and a main route for illegal crossings and the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people from Asia into Europe. Season 1 stars Leszek Lichota (Prawo Agaty) as Captain Wiktor Rebrow, head of the border guard unit in Ustrzyki Górne and the only survivor of a bomb blast that kills his fiancée and friends/colleagues. The devastated Rebrow becomes the prime suspect in the investigation led by Prosecutor Iga Dobosz (Aleksandra Poplawska, Hotel 52), so he does his own digging to find the real perpetrators and to clear his name.
The first season did gangbusters in the ratings in Poland, and was one of the first shows to stream on Walter Presents UK (as The Border) when it launched last year. The second season recently debuted in HBO Europe’s territories.
Wasteland (Pustina) (Czech Republic)
This psychological-crime drama-mystery miniseries stars Zuzana Stivínová (Genius) as Hana Sikorová, the mayor of a small, remote, decrepit Czech mining village in northern Bohemia whose denizens have been living together in harmony for generations. That is, until a foreign mining company begins pitting neighbor against neighbor and buying and razing their houses for a coal mine. Until Hana’s fourteen-year-old daughter goes missing and Hana, opposed to the mine, begins doubting and suspecting everyone around her. And until the once-peaceful community starts falling apart and residents begin showing their true colors.
Wasteland was one of just five television shows selected for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Primetime program in 2016, where the audience was treated to the screening of the entire series (a first).
Stay tuned for updates.
__________________
Add your comments on our Facebook, Google+, and Twitter pages.
Share this post/page.