Tubi Acquires British Comedy Thriller 'Dead Hot'
If you haven’t noticed yet, FAST channels are becoming a rapidly expanding source of British entertainment content in the U.S. For those of you who haven’t tried one of these new platforms yet, FAST stands for Free Ad-supported Streaming Television, essentially what we old folks remember as “regular television,” only it’s now available on your favorite local streaming service and via an app. And while many of these platforms, like The Roku Channel, Amazon Freevee, and Pluto TV, are already valuable destinations for niche programming and reruns of old favorites, they’re all starting to bring over new original content to catch viewer eyeballs.
The Roku Channel brought Paramount+’s recent U.K. original The Burning Girls to American shores with surprisingly little fanfare, while Amazon Freevee did much the same with the Jessica Brown Findlay comedy The Flatshare, though at least it is putting a marketing push behind launching its upcoming BBC thriller Boat Story. But it is the Fox-affiliated Tubi that is digging most enthusiastically into the world of British TV, snapping up shows like Boarders and Big Mood to premiere them as “Tubi originals” in its race to keep up in the seemingly neverending content wars. Its latest acquisition is the Prime Video U.K. thriller Dead Hot, a twisty drama about two friends joining forces to investigate the disappearance of a close connection.
A character-driven thriller that explores issues of class, love, and identity, Dead Hot follows the story of Elliot and Jess, two friends who share a unique grief — Peter, Jess’s twin brother and the first and only love of Elliott’s life, has disappeared under what can only be called mysterious circumstances. Set in present-day Liverpool, the series picks up five years after Peter’s disappearance. Jess and Elliott are still spiraling, partying to numb their grief and clinging to the hope that one day they’ll find out the truth about what happened to the man they both cared so much for. When Elliott meets someone new, he hopes to be able to put the past behind him. But his new boyfriend has dark secrets, and when Jess is contacted by someone claiming to be her brother, the two become determined to do whatever it takes to find out the truth.
