Depending on whether you grew up with Sky or without Sky, your relationship with The Simpsons in the UK will be very different. In September 1990, Sky One started showing The Simpsons every day, and it remains a cornerstone of the channel’s programming line-up 30 years later.
If you didn’t have Sky, you likely watched The Simpsons once a day on BBC2 and later Channel 4, with a ludicrous years-long wait for newer episodes.
That state of things has barely changed – you simply need to have Sky if you want to keep up with The Simpsons. These days, though, you’ve also got 19 seasons of the show on DVD if you want to watch the best episodes on your own schedule.
As Disney Plus UK prepares to launch on March 24, some fans have noticed The Simpsons hasn’t been mentioned by the streaming service in its marketing materials. They’ve noticed that a European marketing video removes a reference to The Simpsons that’s otherwise seen in the trailer for the French and Spanish versions of the service. You’ll see that the donut seen in this Spanish trailer doesn’t appear in the UK version below:
It’s a small detail, but fans picked up on it right away. Either way, Disney hasn’t said whether The Simpsons is coming to the service in the UK – in the US and Australia, all 30 seasons are available to stream. Sky, meanwhile, has said that it will continue showing The Simpsons for the foreseeable future.
It’s not implausible that a rights situation could simply delay The Simpsons’ arrival until a later date – these things can be complicated, and if the alternative was waiting even longer for Disney Plus in the UK, that wouldn’t have been a popular decision either. Whatever happens, you’re bound to see The Simpsons on Disney Plus UK at some point – whether it’s next month or further down the line.
Disney Plus aside, it’s really annoying that The Simpsons still can’t be watched on-demand in the UK after all these years. It makes no sense when American viewers have been able to do so since 2014, with the launch of The Simpsons World app. That’s why having the show on a new streaming service would be such a no-brainer.
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Why does The Simpsons matter so much?
In the UK, the show has always been enormously, disproportionately popular. When ‘new’ episodes launched on Channel 4 in 2004 (they weren’t even new – they were four years old at the time), they attracted 3.6 million viewers. Sky1 still shows The Simpsons at least four times per day, a sign of its enduring popularity, while Channel 4 continues to show it once a day at 6pm. The only US import that’s ever had comparable prominence is the sitcom Friends.
Still, if you grew up in a house without Sky, The Simpsons situation sucked. It’s better now, with the availability of Now TV packages, which let you watch Sky One live. But having 30 seasons of the show to stream would be a game-changer. There are lots of fans out there who are just waiting to finally have all those Simpsons episodes on tap for the first time.
The Simpsons is still treated like it’s too precious for streaming services in the UK, in an age where even Studio Ghibli films are available to watch on Netflix – if Disney Plus doesn’t launch with it, someone should let us stream it this year. Why should the UK be the only country to miss out?
