The Chernobyl disaster took place in April 1986, when a nuclear power plant exploded on a catastrophic scale. The drama will explore why and how it happened, as well as the people who risked their own lives to save others.
Jared Harris (The Crown, Mad Men) will play Valery Legasov, the Soviet scientist chosen by the Kremlin to investigate the accident.
George R R Martin has signed a contract with HBO and four writers to prolong Game of Thrones with some spin-offs.
A spokeswoman for HBO said: "We'll take as much or as little time as the writers need and, as with all our development, we will evaluate what we have when the scripts are in."
One of the four writers up to extend the show is Jane Goldman, who co-wrote the superhero flick Kick-Ass.
Mad Men writer Carly Wray, Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) and Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island) are the other three on board.
The 10-part series, a collaboration between Sky, HBO and French network Canal+, will be broadcast on Sky Atlantic in Italy, Germany, Austria, Great Britain and France from late October.
Jude Law plays the fictional Lenny Belardo, also known as Pius XIII, the first American Pope in history.
The series also follows the other leaders of the Catholic Church who have chosen to devote their lives to serving the great mystery of God. The character of Pius XIII will be ruthless and stubborn towards Vatican advisers, but emotionally sensitive deep down.
An average of 5 million weekly viewers tuned in to the fantasy drama over season six. The figure includes people streaming episodes from Sky Go and Now TV, with Sky increasing audience numbers by offering catch-up box-sets for people not familiar with the show as part of its on demand services.
Everyone’s favourite character (and mathematically speaking, the main character) is played by American actor Peter Dinklage.
Gary Davey is one of pay-TV’s most experienced executives. He was part of the team that launched Sky TV in the late 1980s. Now, after holding senior positions in Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland and Star TV (when he was based in Hong Kong), he is back in the UK. He was appointed Sky’s Managing Director for Content in January 2015.
Speaking at an RTS Early Evening Event Davey said that despite the proliferation of ways of watching content linear channels would continue to survive.
“Channels will always be around. | cannot see a future where they don’t exist,” said Davey, a pay TV veteran who was part of the team that helped establish the pioneering satellite broadcaster in the early 1990s.
“There is a revolution going on but it’s happening a lot slower than people think…
Netflix could be expanding into current affairs, the company’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos has said.
Until now, the on-demand service has focused mainly on film and television content with a long shelf life.
However, speaking in Netflix’s Q3 2015 earnings interview, Sarandos said the company could be following its competitor HBO into producing more timely content.
In 2013, HBO teamed up with co-founder and CEO of Vice Shane Smith to produce documentary series Vice for the US cable network. The show’s fourth season is due to air next year.
The RTS Cambridge Convention 2015 took place from Wednesday 16 to Friday 18 September, seeing senior leaders from the television industry on both sides of the Atlantic converge on the city.
The topics covered over the three days ranged from the importance of the BBC worldwide, to a debate about the lessons learnt from the General Election 2015, to the continued challenge that the television industry faces with the rise of video content emerging on digital platforms.
HBO’s President of Programming, Michael Lombardo, might have a reputation for being a touch obsessive, but, when it comes to his list of hit shows, it seems that such qualities work just fine.
