The Pitt could land in Ireland next year. What is taking so long?

We want everything and we want it now. To be more precise, we want what the Americans are now droning about and we want it while they are still doing their droning.

The Hollywood satire The Studio lands on Apple TV+ in Mullingar the same day it lands in Milwaukee. So does Andor, on Disney+. You can watch Thunderbolts*, the latest Marvel flick, most everywhere in the world this weekend.

Heck, you can, in a few weeks, catch Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning here a whole two days before it opens in its home country. In your face, America!

That’s how it now is. The conversation on social media knows nothing of borders. As X or Threads or Instagram is discussing The White Lotus in the United States, a billion overseas eavesdroppers are listening in. No streamer wants to risk dissipating that sort of buzz. Just observe how Adolescence – and, a year earlier, Baby Reindeer – escaped potential niche status to become worldwide phenomena.

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All of which brings us to the strange case of The Pitt. If you were anywhere near the global water cooler during the first months of 2025 you will have read Americans going ballistic for the new medical drama from the showrunner R Scott Gemmill.

Noah Wyle, still best known as the fresh-faced Dr Carter from ER, pulls on the scrubs again as the senior physician at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. (The Pitt: get it?)

Over 15 episodes, ending last month, the show earned more raves than any recent small-screen release this side of Adolescence. “It’s already without question the finest example of the genre in more than a generation,” the Atlantic bellowed, apparently gesturing back to Wyle’s breakthrough show. “You’ll have your heart broken and mended several times per episode,” the usually restrained New Yorker puffed.

It was praised both for its realism and for its compassion. Awards watchers already have The Pitt marked down for multiple Emmys.

What does The Irish Times think? Are we getting on board or will we be among the first to deem the thing “overrated”? Alas, only those of us who have had access to the US streamer Max, a HBO-derived arm of Warner Bros Discovery, will have been able to form a sincere (and legal) opinion. The show debuted there and, as yet, there has been no news of a UK and Ireland release.

Most viewers (including this one) initially expected The Pitt to turn up on Sky or Now. An ongoing deal between Warner Bros Discovery and those outlets suggested this as a likely option, but, a few weeks ago, Sky confirmed the show would not be coming their way.

“Perhaps The Pitt will turn up on another platform in the next few months,” the Guardian remarked. “Although there’s a chance that it may instead premiere on the UK version of Max that WBD will launch with some fanfare next year.”

Next year? Are these people insane? It may as well be arriving in the 25th century. Imagine if Max tried this on with its incoming, much-droned-about Harry Potter series. The West European Nerd Alliance would march on the streamer’s headquarters with flaming broomsticks. Imagine if the Star Wars people risked such delays.

We don’t need to imagine it. Gather around the campfire while I tell you a scarcely believable tale from a far-off time when dragons ruled the air and giants walked the earth. It was 1977. On May 25th Star Wars was released. It almost immediately became a phenomenon. Buzz got around much slower then, but it did eventually get around.

Newspapers were soon alerting children of the outer planets that this space opera was worth waiting for. And they would, indeed, have to wait. The film didn’t arrive here for another seven months. This pattern remained in place for at least another decade – on TV as well as in cinemas.

Like Star Wars, ET was, in 1982, a summer release for Americans and a Christmas release for Irish folk (which actually suited respective cinemagoing habits). By then, however, pirate VHS versions were crossing the Atlantic early, and the shift to worldwide harmony seemed inevitable.

Is the moral to shut up and take it? That, if Generation X endured it, then so can their successors? Certainly not. This is just one small way in which the past was awful and the present is, for the most part, considerably more palatable.

Happily, the current case seems an aberration. The Pitt is a rare outlier in its sluggish progress to the Old World and, as such, might ultimately suit Warner Bros nicely. The novelty appeal of “the show you’ve been waiting for” should significantly boost audience interest when Max eventually arrives here. But let’s not hang on so long for the second series.