Bookish Reaches 100+ Territories, HBO Max Adds It
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- HBO Max has picked up the cozy crime series Bookish for its Australian streaming service.
- Bookish, created and starring Mark Gatiss, is set in 1940s post‑war London and follows a gay bibliophile sleuth in a lavender marriage.
- Beta Film has sold Bookish internationally, securing deals with Radio Canada, Sky New Zealand, Viasat World (CEE), BBC Brit (Africa) and Italy’s RAI, pushing the series past the 100‑territory milestone.
- Bookish has also been sold to AMC Networks (Latin America and Brazil), BBC First (Benelux), TRT (Turkey), HRT (Croatia), DR (Denmark) and SVT (Sweden).
- UKTV’s Alibi channel aired the launch episode of Bookish, which averaged 1.5 million viewers, the second‑highest‑performing premiere ever on the channel.
- Season 2 of Bookish is about to drop, returning Mark Gatiss, Polly Walker and Connor Finch, and adding Jason Watkins, Miranda Richardson and Simon Callow to the cast.
Why it matters: Beta Film gains a lucrative new market foothold as Bookish now spans 100+ territories, while HBO Max bolsters its Australian catalogue with a proven, LGBTQ‑friendly cozy‑crime hit, reinforcing the genre’s international demand and expanding revenue streams for both distributor and platform.
