Sky Plays New Episode of ‘Twin Peaks’ a Week Early in Germany

With online leaks a major concern for networks and producers, one of Europe’s largest pay TV platforms has put out an upcoming episode of “Twin Peaks” a week early.

Sky Deutschland played episode 14, Monday, instead of the scheduled episode 13. German fans took to social media to complain and Sky confirmed the error, and that it had run the show out of sequence.

“Due to an accidently wrong labeling of the broadcasting file of a new episode of ‘Twin Peaks,’ episode 14 instead of 13 was available on Sky On Demand in Germany for a short period of time this morning,” it said in a statement issued to Variety late Monday. “As soon as we got notice, the episode was removed. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on making the correct episode available for our customers as soon as possible tonight.”

Sky, which has five million subscribers, subsequently told Variety it had put the correct episode up last night, Monday.

Despite Sky saying episode 14 was only available for a short time, fans were already sharing spoilers and images on Reddit and social networks. Germany’s anti-piracy laws are notoriously strict, and there was no evidence the upcoming episode had been shared in full online. CBS Studios International, which distributes Showtime programming, confirmed it knew of the error but made no further comment.

The new season of the David Lynch mystery thriller, which runs to eighteen installments, goes out at the same time on Sky in the U.K., Germany and Italy, as on Showtime in the U.S., meaning the new episode ran exactly a week ahead of time. After taking the advance episode down in Germany, an on-screen apology said “something has gone wrong.”

The pay TV operator has an output deal with CBSSI for Showtime drama series across the U.K., Germany, and Italy. In Germany “Twin Peaks” is carried on-demand and then on the Sky Atlantic channel the following Thursday.

David Lynch directed and co-wrote all of the third season of the show, which had its international launch at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Germany has an unenviable record in terms of “Twin Peaks” spoilers. In 1990 Sat.1 revealed Laura Palmer’s killer on its text service before the episode in question could go out on rival free-to-air channel RTL.