HBO will let you stream its best shows for free, including Veep and The Sopranos

By Meira Gebel April 2, 2020

For the first time ever, more than 500 hours of HBO programming — including fan-favorites like Veep, The Sopranos, and The Wire — will be available to stream for free and without a subscription. The company’s #StayAtHomeBoxOffice campaign kicks off Friday.

In a press release, HBO said its decision was made “to provide some entertainment relief for those doing their part to keep everyone safe and healthy in this time of social isolation.”

Those interested can watch dozens of TV shows and movies just by downloading the HBO Now or HBO Go apps or by visiting HBONow.com or HBOGo.com.

In late March, the company announced HBO Now streaming jumped over 40% as more and more people across the U.S. were mandated to shelter in place due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has also shuttered movie theaters and stalled highly anticipated film releases like Wonder Woman 1984, The Matrix 4, and The Batman.

HBO joins the likes of other streaming giants like Amazon Prime Video, which currently offers viewers the option of “in-theater rentals” — movies released for at-home streaming while they are still showing in theaters — and Netflix, which created a $100 million fund to aid laid-off creative crew members who were previously working on sets across the globe before coronavirus led production to a halt.

Tony Soprano — HBO

Some of the titles available to stream for free on HBO include Warner Bros. films The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, The Bridges of Madison County, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu, as well as HBO original series like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and Silicon Valley. Ten docuseries will also be available for viewing and include: I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, and True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality.

HBO plans to continue its #StayHomeBoxOffice campaign, encouraging people to self-isolate, and will coordinate programming “via participating distribution partners’ platforms in the coming days.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Meira Gebel is a freelance reporter based in Portland. She writes about tech, social media, and internet culture for Digital…

Entertainment

Don’t let these 3 hidden February streaming TV shows fly under your radar

A samurai looking straight ahead in a close-up in a scene from Shogun.

You’ve kept up to date with all the new and returning shows coming this month and beyond, likely thanks to our handy guides! But there are always hidden gems that you might have glossed over. Is it really something you’ll want to watch? You haven’t heard or read much about the show, so maybe it’s best to wait. We have you covered.

Here, we highlight three hidden February streaming TV shows that might have flown under your radar but are worth checking out. Chances are you probably haven’t even heard of these shows. One new FX series, in particular, promises to breathe new life into a fascinating story that was last adapted way back in the ‘80s.
A Bloody Lucky Day (2024)

Entertainment

3 (HBO) Max crime dramas you should watch in February 2024

A Most Violent Year

For as long as HBO has been a brand, it's been associated, at least in part, with crime dramas. Everything from True Detective: Night Country to The Sopranos to The Wire has emerged from the network, and all those drama series live on Max now.

In addition to all of the great drama series on Max, though, the streaming service is also home to one of the deepest selections of crime movies you could ask for. There are plenty of great original titles that you can check out, as well as a deep library of movies that were wildly acclaimed during their initial runs in theaters. Here are three of the very best crime dramas on Max for you to check out:
No Sudden Move (2021)
No Sudden Move | Official Trailer | HBO Max

Entertainment

This underrated HBO show from the 2000s has been forgotten. Here’s why you should watch it now

A teenager girl and a boy talk in Big Love.

“Best of All Time” TV lists are now as common as the seasons changing, and they tend to highlight shows from relatively recent history. Old standbys such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Deadwood make their almost-default appearances on these lists, with the occasional inclusion of such genre fare as Battlestar Galactica. So where does that leave Big Love, Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer’s polygamist family drama, which aired on HBO from 2006-2011?
Its first two seasons aired following The Sopranos, and Big Love, similarly, seems to have been overshadowed in every contemporary discussion about the best of early 21st-century TV drama, despite its being a necessary part of any TV aficionado’s understanding of that form. It differs from its contemporaries in vital, interesting ways, but its bones and blood are made of the same attention to detail and appreciation of craft that made Breaking Bad, say, shine. In the age of the rewatch, when cable TV classics are making inroads among generations who missed them when they first appeared, where’s the love for Big Love in 2024?
Big Love has all the ingredients of a TV drama classic of the noughties

Start with the seemingly upstanding family man with a dark secret: Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), proprietor of a Salt Lake City-based chain of home supply stores. In the pilot (aired in 2006), Bill goes about his business in his upstanding Mormon community, only to return home – surprise! – to three contiguous houses on a block in Sandy, Utah, where his three wives and seven children live as a closeted family cluster. (Mad Men recreates this dynamic beat for beat in its 2007 pilot, as Don Draper, a seemingly carefree, bed-hopping singleton about town in Manhattan, returns at the end of a day’s work to a wife and children in Ossining.)
Sandy has its requisite suspicious neighbors (like Hank on Breaking Bad or Stan on The Americans) who are certain not all is well on their block. And is there a patriarchal, devoutly focused crime family that runs its desert town almost unimpeded, à la Sons of Anarchy? Check! Harry Dean Stanton plays Roman Grant, father of Bill’s second wife (Chloe Sevigny). Roman is the leader of an extremist Mormon sect living on a compound in southern Utah, where Bill grew up -- until Roman kicked him out onto the street when Bill was 14. In 2006, Big Love was already playing with the dynamics and themes that had yet to launch its followers to TV immortality.
What makes Big Love different from other prestige shows