Amazon’s big-ticket series Expats, set and filmed in Hong Kong, is not available for viewing in the city despite being billed as a worldwide release.
The first two episodes of the drama, starring Nicole Kidman and directed by The Farewell’s Lulu Wang, were released on Friday but listed as “currently unavailable” for viewers in Hong Kong. The series, based on a 2016 novel, The Expatriates, focuses on the lives of three American women in Hong Kong.
The production of Expats had been largely welcomed by authorities. In 2021 Kidman was controversially allowed to bypass the strict Covid quarantine rules in place at the time to film the series.
The unavailability of the first two episodes has been attributed by some observers to the setting of the penultimate episode, according to reviews, against the backdrop of the 2014 umbrella movement protests.
Since a government crackdown on the pro-democracy movement escalated in 2020, authorities have become increasingly sensitive to political or critical works of art.
In 2021 laws were introduced preventing broadcasts that breached the broad and draconian national security law, imposed in 2020. The censorship laws have meant directors being ordered to make cuts to works, or entire films being banned from broadcast. Authorities have said those laws do not apply to streaming services, but content such as Expats sits in a grey area as online platforms are still otherwise subject to the national security law.
Amazon Studios has been contacted for comment.
In November 2021, when the Disney+ streaming service launched in Hong Kong, the Simpsons seasons on offer were missing an episode in which the family visit Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In the episode there is a sign in the square that reads “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened” – a satirical nod to China’s campaign to purge memories of the massacre of student protesters by authorities.
