Nurse Jackie To Sky Atlantic - Are The BBC Mental?

So it seems that in just one week non Sky viewers have lost two great shows, Glee and Nurse Jackie.

Sky Atlantic has poached the show from the BBC and will be showing season 3 from July 5^th. Just weeks after the second season finished on BBC 2.

Now I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of shows going behind pay walls. I did all that on Monday with Glee. But what I will question is why do the terrestrial channels not want good quality shows? Nurse Jackie is quite frankly one of the best half hour dramas on the TV (if you haven’t watched it go buy it on DVD immediately) and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t fight to keep it. Poor ratings has been sited as the reason the BBC didn’t renew it but they only have themselves to blame for that by putting it on at 10pm on a Saturday night.

Up until 6 months ago the BBC was home to Mad Men and Nurse Jackie. I mean it’s one thing giving up Nurse Jackie but they gave up Mad Men! It’s almost farcical. So instead of having two of the best shows in America on the BBC, we pay our license fee for endless episodes of Family Guy, Eastenders and My Family.

I didn’t really agree with Glee moving to Sky 1. I felt like you were taking a great show away from its core audience but with Nurse Jackie moving to Sky Atlantic, well I’m pleased! It now means we can watch the new series in two weeks time and it will be treated with the respect it deserves. Not taken off for ‘book week’ mid season. True story, one week it was taken off for Book Club the week after that taken off for the Golf. If it weren’t for Chris Lilly’s Angry Boys I would be demanding my license fee back!