Game of Thrones to be broadcast simultaneously around Earth - which means 11am Monday AEST

HBO has announced it will broadcast Game of Thrones season five simultaneously around the globe, making fans more deliciously delirious than a late-night Google Image binge on "Jon Snow's abs".

Clicks, double clicks, and triple double clicks confirmed any quasi-religious exaltation was not just a primal reaction to the razor-like perfection of J.Snow's inguinal crease, but joy at the imminent prospect of watching our favourite cut-and-thrusters cutting and thrusting in a synchronised worldwide fashion.

In the greatest coming together of like-minded souls since Jon Snow and Ygritte went spelunking beyond The Wall, Throners in 170 countries will experience The Joy of GoT at whatever 9pm (US Eastern Standard Time) on Sunday, April 12, is in their own nation.

It took me several hours, an astrolabe and an emergency call to Stephen Hawking to work out that will mean 11am (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Monday, April 13.

If ever there was a way to stave off the back-at-work-Monday-blues, surely this is it. Well, it is if you have an understanding boss and Foxtel installed at the office.

Bless your little cotton socks, HBO. Bless your worldwide partner networks, which in Australia's case means Foxtel. Bless anyone who can deliver me 10 glorious episodes of complex, thought-provoking drama with a high nudie-licious content without the risk of social media spoilers.

HBO's announcement came just a day after a second Game of Thrones trailer was unleashed during Apple's new product launch.

 

Imagine that - one minute Tim Cook and a single-port gold MacBook, the next, Daenerys Targaryen and a triple-pronged attack from her ever-embiggening dragons. I haven't been this jealous of tech geeks since Penny from Inspector Gadget invented a book that was actually a computer (not a bad idea, Apple minions, you should get onto that).

Dae-nizzle can be heard in the trailer dissing the Lannisters, Starks, Tyrells and Baratheons as merely "spokes on a wheel" that she intends to break. There were shots of Stannis with his army taking the North, Tyrion looking bedraggled across the Narrow Sea, Tommen and Margaery smooching on what can only be their wedding day (oh, by the gods, not another wedding), a whole bunch of characters whinging about winter and being cold, and Jon Snow slashing at something with his sword (sigh, if only).

All this, and we get to see it at exactly the same time as the Americans. And the Canadians. And the British. And pretty much everywhere except Antarctica, where ironically, winter really IS coming.

Groundbreaking move

The deal, clinched by the Time Warner-owned HBO and a number of its key broadcasters around the world, means the series will effectively be aired live in Australia.

The global simulcast will be timed to coincide with the US east coast broadcast of the series. That means, for example, that viewers in Sydney and Melbourne will see the show before viewers in Los Angeles, where it airs three hours later.

Roughly 15 broadcasters around the world will be part of the simulcast, including six HBO-owned broadcasters, HBO Asia, HBO Canada, HBO Europe, HBO Latin America, HBO Netherlands and HBO Nordic.

Australia's Foxtel and New Zealand's Sky will participate, as will France's Orange, Israel's DBS, Iceland's 365 Media, the Sky-owned broadcasters, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia and others.

HBO's president of programming Michael Lombardo said the deal would cover the entire 10-episode run of season five.

"We are thrilled to see our international partners jumping on board to bring Game of Thrones, one of the most universally loved television shows in the world, to global audiences at the same time it airs on HBO in the US," he said.

"It's going to be a great season."

Though HBO has not explicitly said so, the move is in part due to illicit downloading of the series, a problem which is amplified by markets were there is delay in delivering.

- with Michael Idato