Forget Netflix: HBO is making tons of movies and TV free to watch for everyone

(Image credit: HBO)

published 5 April 2020

Have you watched everything on Netflix yet? Deep-dived on everything Amazon Prime has to offer? If self-isolation or quarantine means you've run through all the DVDs and Blu-Rays in your collection, good news: HBO has made huge chunks of its content available to stream, absolutely free.

Best-known for prestige dramas such as Games of Thrones, there's plenty of incredible TV, movies and documentaries in HBO's incredible lineup. Available from this week, the releases were announced in a series of tweets on the official HBO Twitter account. Check them out below and then see our list of everything that's coming on the HBO Go and HBO Now apps:

And we’ll have a bunch of movies you can watch without a subscription, including:@isntitromantic@TheLEGOMovie 2 @SMALLFOOTMovie@DetPikachuMovieAnd much more#StayHomeBoxOfficeApril 2, 2020

Everything free on HBO: TV shows

Ballers
Barry
Silicon Valley
Six Feet Under
The Sopranos
Succession
True Blood
Veep
The Wire

Yep, Dwayne Johnson's hit series Ballers will be available for free for the first time. It'll be joined by legendary dramas such as The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under, alongside brilliant political comedy series Veep.

Everything free on HBO: Documentaries

The Apollo
The Case Against Adnan Syed
Elvis Presley: The Searcher
The Inventor
Jane Fonda in Five Acts
I Love You, Now Die
McMillion$
True Justice
United Skates
We Are the Dream

Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali's We Are The Dream is available, as is McMillions, the weirdly engrossing McDonald's Monopoly documentary series. There's also plenty of real life celebrity stories, from Elvis Presley and Jane Fonda to the story of black American stars like James Brown and Aretha Franklin in The Apollo.

Everything free on HBO: movies

Arthur
Arthur 2: On the Rocks
Blinded By the Light
The Bridges of Madison County
Crazy, Stupid, Love
Empire of the Sun
Forget Paris
Happy Feet Two
Isn’t It Romantic?
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Midnight Special
My Dog Skip
Nancy Drew And The Hidden Staircase
Pan
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Red Riding Hood
Smallfoot
Storks
Sucker Punch
Unknown

A great mix here. With enough to keep the kids happy with Detective Pikachu, Happy Feet Two, Pan, Lego Movie 2 and loads more. Once the kids have gone to bed, indulge in more grown-up fare with The Bridges of Madison County and the eminently watchable Crazy, Stupid, Love. That'll keep the quarantine blues away.

Unfortunately, the big problem with HBO is that you'll need to be in the US to take advantage of it. Either that, or you can use a virtual private network, or VPN.

In recent times, VPN services have made giant leaps in growing from niche online products hidden away in a dark corner of the internet to must-have services for anyone with an internet connected device.

The sudden need for people all over the globe to isolate in the light of the global health crisis has only exacerbated this and it's no wonder that VPN downloads are going through the roof right now. Check out our pick of the litter below, or head over to our Best VPN buying guide for more.

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Matt Evans now works for T3.com sister brand TechRadar, covering all things relating to fitness and wellness. He came to T3.com as staff writer before moving on, and was previously on Men's Health, and slightly counterintuitively, a website devoted to the consumption of Scotch whiskey. In his free time, he could often be found with his nose in a book until he discovered the Kindle.