Starz is a Better Home For ‘Minx’ Than HBO Max Ever Was

This Friday, Minx returns triumphantly from the dead. The endearing comedy about the rise of a groundbreaking pornographic magazine for women in the sleazy ’70s was brutally axed late last year in the wake of a slew of myriad cost-cutting measures that followed David Zaslav‘s ascension as Warner Bros. Discovery head. The critically-acclaimed show found itself both canceled and yanked off of home streaming service Max during the last week of production on Season 2. It very well could have wound up on a FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming) channel like fellow shanked series The Nevers, but Minx found its new home on Starz. Minx Season 2 premieres on Starz this Friday, July 21 and honestly? Starz is a much better fit for Minx than Max ever was.

Minx is a series that is emphatically about enjoying sex as an expression of freedom. Talented writer and editor Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) dreams of launching a radical feminist magazine, but the boys’ club of 1970s magazine publishing doesn’t see ad dollars in her intellectual fare. However, erotic magazine publisher Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) pitches a unique way to market Joyce’s feminism to the masses. He convinces Joyce to help him publish the first women’s erotic magazine, Minx. Artsy photos of handsome nude men would come packaged with Joyce’s incendiary articles about female liberation. Naturally, the duo face pushback from everyone from patriarchal pricks and Christian conservatives to snooty elitists and judgmental feminists.

A show like Minx, which unabashedly celebrates feminism, sexuality, and the female gaze, deserves to be on a platform that has long championed those qualities in its ground-breaking storytelling. For over a decade, Starz has been the home of female-focused bodice-rippers like Outlander, sex-positive series like P-Valley and Vida, and complex takes on the push-and-pull of feminism like The Girlfriend Experience. When Minx was on Max, it was just yet another show tossed on a platform to try to entice potential subscribers to get some credit cards on file. When Minx Season 2 premieres on Starz, the show will be coming home.

Starz didn’t start producing its own original content until 2014 when it began it narrow in on its brand. That’s when Outlander fostered a loyal audience of viewers who have since lapped up Starz’s steady stream of historical epics and nervy contemporary fare about formidable heroines owning their ambition and sexuality in equal measure. At the same time, the 50 Cent-produced Power became a monster hit for the network, offering viewers a drama with the stakes of Game of Thrones, but set in the underbelly of New York City. Power‘s spin-offs and successor shows at Starz share the original hit’s bold embrace of sex, politics, and fierce women. Starz is a network that is not afraid of sex, feminism, or challenging the mainstream in any way.

Minx might not have made sense alongside fellow axed Max originals like the psychedelic sci-fi opus Raised By Wolves or the heartwarming Gordita Chronicles, but it certainly fits in next to current Starz hits Outlander, P-Valley, and even current Starz crime dramas like BMF and Power Book IV: Force. Heck, you can even see how Minx pairs with Heels, as both shows are about scrappy underdogs attempting to plant their flags in unforgiving industries.

Starz didn’t just save Minx from the cold death of cancelation, it resurrected it like a phoenix from the ashes, gifting the series a place to belong.

Ironically, this isn’t even the first time that Minx has found itself “like a phoenix rising out of the ashes,” to quote executive producer Paul Feig last year. In the run up to the show’s initial premiere on the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max, Feig and Minx creator Ellen Rapoport told Decider that TNT was initially interested in the series, but balked at the plan to show full frontal male nudity.

“I thought [Minx would] be an easy sell and I’d just walk in and be like, ‘We’re gonna show 30 dicks,’” Minx creator Ellen Rapoport told Decider last year. “I was wrong. It was an incredibly hard sell. I think people really liked it and they gave us the nicest passes: ‘But you know obviously we’re not going to put penises on our service.’ Which, fair enough.”

When HBO Max was launched as a year after Feig and Rapoport’s original round of pitches, nudity was no longer an issue for the WarnerMedia execs who had initially passed on the series. Minx joined a scattershot group of original streaming programs, many of which have since been cancelled and stripped off the site they helped launch in the first place. Minx was essentially given the bait and switch by Warner, but will likely find more supportive partners in Starz.

Minx‘s fate after Season 2 is yet unknown. The show could flounder on Starz, but given the fact that the service scooped it up so quickly and bookended it with Outlander Season 7 and Men in Kilts Season 2, suggests they understand Minx‘s target audience. Minx is a show for women and men who aren’t afraid of strong female characters, male objectification, and poking fun at sexism.

Minx Season 2 premieres on Starz on Friday, July 21.