HBO has put the pilot episode of its new comedy Silicon Valley on YouTube. The network's decision to put the episode online likely has a lot to do with the fact that HBO GO crashed during the season premier of Game of Thrones earlier in the evening.
If you aren't up to speed, the show follows a group of lovable techies that come up with a clever money-making idea that quickly leads to industry notoriety and success. It's the latest project from Mike Judge of Office Space, King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-Head fame and is said to be loosely based on his experience as a Silicon Valley engineer in the 1980s.
The series stars T.J. Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr, Zach Woods and Thomas Middleditch. Google chairman Eric Schmid is one of many real-life tech celebs that will make a cameo during the eight-episode series. That shouldn't be a surprise as Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were both mentioned in the show's trailer.
Sabrina Caluori, HBO's vice-president of social media and marketing, said earlier this year that this is an increasingly challenging demographic to reach using traditional means. True enough, reaching out via non-traditional methods will no doubt help them connect with an active online fan base and could also lure in new viewers that don't currently subscribe to the premium channel's offerings.
The video is only available to those in the U.S., but Chrome users can easily bypass that restriction by installing an extension called Hola! and reloading this page.