Foxtel Finally Revealed When They’ll Air ‘Arrested Development’ Season 5

Welp, you can put all speculation to bed here, at long last. The saga of when Australians will be able to put their eyes across Arrested Development‘s imminent Season Five is over.

You might recall the giant release-date clusterfuck that stated that, even though it’s a Netflix original show now, Australians would not be able to access the fifth season at the same time as everyone else in the world, as is the norm with Netflix shows nowadays.

This was due to distribution deals Netflix signed with Foxtel back in the day – prior to the streaming service “officially” arriving in Australia – that gave the Pay TV provider dibs on the first-run rights to new episodes of the show. This, basically, meant that Foxtel had to air the show first before Netflix would be allowed to add it to the Australian library.

The TL;DR version of that mess is that, while everywhere else in the world gets the show as it drops on Netflix on May 29th, Australians would have to wait until Foxtel did their thing.

And while they’ve remained tight-lipped on plans to air Season 5, Foxtel have finally revealed what in the blue hell is going on.

Reps at Foxtel have confirmed that the first eight episodes of Season 5 will go to air in a special marathon event from 5:00pm on Wednesday, May 30th.

That’s one measly day after it drops on Netflix, which is… not the absolute worst thing.

The eight episodes (the second half of the season isn’t scheduled to land on Netflix until later in the year) will air back-to-back on the Comedy Channel, with Foxtel trumpeting it as an Australian exclusive that’s “direct from the US” whatever the christ that means in this instance.

From there, the episodes will air weekly on the Comedy Channel on Mondays at 9:00pm from June 4th, if you’re so inclined.

But by airing it in one block, Netflix will then be free to add the show to its AU library shortly thereafter. So if you’re keen to view it on Netflix, you’ll have a little wait, but not a large one on your hands.

So there you have it, folks. 5:00pm, Wednesday the 30th on the Comedy Channel. Netflix after that.

And that’s why you don’t sign weird, prohibitive distribution deals that don’t factor future global expansion in.

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