To offer viewers the same binge-viewing experience they now enjoy on streaming platforms, NBC will make the unprecedented move of releasing all 13 episodes of David Duchovny’s new series “Aquarius” on NBC.com and the NBC app after the show’s two-hour linear network premiere on May 28, 2015. The entire series will also be offered to all other video-on-demand platforms for release at that time as well.
In making the announcement, NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said, “With ‘Aquarius’ we have the opportunity to push some new boundaries to give our audience something no broadcast network has done before. We are fully aware how audiences want to consume multiple episodes of new television series faster and at their own discretion, and we’re excited to offer our viewers this same experience since all 13 episodes of this unique show have been produced and are ready to be seen. I appreciate the enthusiasm we’ve gotten from the producers of the show and our partner Marty Adelstein of Tomorrow Studios to launch this series in a new, forward-thinking way.”
One of the key points of the arrangement is that the show will be available to only a handful of certain advertising partners so the linear broadcast on NBC will mirror the commercial load on the VOD platforms. This will result in limited interruption — both on-air and off — giving viewers and advertising partners an enhanced and innovative experience.
The full 13 episodes will remain up on the various digital platforms for a four-week period, while each new one-hour episode will continue to premiere, as planned, each week in the 9 p.m. Thursday timeslot on NBC.
Los Angeles. 1967. Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny, “Californication,” “The X-Files”), a decorated World War II vet and homicide detective, barely recognizes the city he’s now policing. Long hair, cheap drugs, rising crime, protests, free love, police brutality, Black Power and the Vietnam War are radically remaking the world he and the Greatest Generation saved from fascism 20 years ago.
So when Emma Karn (Emma Dumont, “Salvation,” “Bunheads”), the 16-year-old daughter of an old girlfriend, goes missing in a sea of hippies and Hodiak agrees to find her, he faces only hostility, distrust and silence. He enlists the help of Brian Shafe (Grey Damon, “True Blood,” “Friday Night Lights”) — a young, idealistic undercover vice cop who’s been allowed to grow his hair out — to infiltrate this new counterculture and find her.
The generational conflict between the two is immediate and heated, yet they’re both dedicated officers and soon realize the need to bring Emma home is more urgent than they foresaw. The immediacy arises because she has joined a small, but growing, band of drifters under the sway of a career criminal who now dreams of being a rock star: Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony, “Game of Thrones”).
Ringing with the unparalleled music of the era, “Aquarius” is a sprawling work of historical fiction that begins two years before the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. It’s a shocking thriller, a nuanced character drama and, in the end, the story of how we became who we are today.
Writer John McNamara serves as executive producer with Marty Adelstein (“Prison Break”), David Duchovny, Becky Clements and Melanie Greene. “Aquarius” is a production of Tomorrow Studios, a joint partnership between Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios.
