Watching This Week #115

Welcome to the June 26, 2023, edition of Watching This Week, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada.

Ahead in this week's newsletter: a new Canadian streaming home for Parks and Recreation; a Canadian premiere date for the new season of The Bear; and more. That's all after this week's listings.

First, a quick update about how this newsletter (and WCIW in general) will operate over the next couple of months. As I mentioned a few months ago, there have been very happy but nonetheless time-consuming changes in my life this year. Over July and August, outside of my main day job and a couple of other prior commitments, I'm hoping to spend as much of my free time as possible with my family.

While we'll continue to post monthly roundups as well as weekly newsletters, the weekly updates will be short, and in some cases prepared well in advance; it's unlikely we'll answer many mailbag questions during this time. There may be a small number of other updates elsewhere in the site over the summer.

For this coming week specifically, we are working on our July programming listings roundup which we plan to post in a few days, most likely by Saturday. The next regular (but abbreviated) newsletter will be sent out Monday, July 10.

As of now, our plan is to return to full-length newsletters in early September.

Thank you for your understanding and for your continued support of WCIW.

What's new this week – June 26–July 2

Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. We strive for accuracy but schedules may change without notice. Some series/seasons may have weekly rollouts; we won't list new episodes every week (though we may note significant episodes such as series finales). *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.

Additional programming for July 1-2 may be included in our monthly guide for July, which will be sent out later this week.

• Netflix: Delete (Thai series – Wednesday); Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators (docuseries – Wednesday); Run Rabbit Run (horror film starring Sarah Snook – Wednesday); Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (anime series – Thursday); The Witcher (season 3, part 1 – Thursday); Is it Cake? (season 2 – Friday); Nimona (graphic novel adaptation film – Friday)
• Disney+: Anthem (Onyx Collective doc – Wednesday); Disney Gallery – Star Wars: The Mandalorian (making of S3 – Wednesday); Freeks (Latin American series – Wednesday); Home Improvement (1991–99 sitcom – Wednesday); A Small Light (2023 Nat Geo Channel series – Wednesday); Week-End Family (season 2 – Wednesday); Secret Chef (Hulu reality series – Thursday); 548 Days (Spanish docuseries – Friday); Wild Life (2023 Nat Geo doc – Friday)
• Crave: Ontario Racing Unfiltered (sponsored docuseries – episode 1 added Monday, June 5*, episode 2 Tuesday); Naked: Sex and Gender (original doc – Monday*); Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music (HBO doc / concert film – Tuesday); Drag Race France (season 2 – Thursdays); Warrior (season 3 of the revived Max series – Thursdays); Beast (2022 horror film – Friday); Infinity Pool (2023 Brandon Cronenberg horror film – Friday); Parks and Recreation (2009–15 series – Saturday); Who You Gonna Call? (documentary about "Ghostbusters" songwriter Ray Parker Jr. – Saturday)
• Prime Video: My Heart is Beating (Korean series – Monday); Sabtu Bersama Bapak (Indonesian series – Thursday); Jack Ryan (season 4 – Friday); My Man is Cupid (Korean series – Friday); Shooting Stars (direct-to-Peacock film about LeBron James in high school – Friday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): The Lottery: The Mexican Dream (original comedy-drama film – Tuesday); The Patrick Star Show (additional episodes – Tuesday); three Bruce Springsteen concert films / documentaries (Wednesday); Alone Australia (reality series – Friday); Biography: WWE Legends (seasons 1-2 – Friday)
• Apple TV+: Hijack (thriller series – Wednesdays)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Hoff the Record (2015–16 comedy series – Thursday)
• CBC Television (also on CBC Gem): Canada Day: A Playlist to Celebrate (Parliament Hill concert – Saturday at 8:00 p.m. local / 9:00 AT / 9:30 NT)
• Global (also on StackTV): Tough as Nails (season 5 – Sundays)
• Citytv (also on Citytv+): The Bachelorette (season 20 – Mondays); The Chase (season 3, part 3 – Thursdays)
• ABC Spark: Grown-ish (season 6 – Wednesdays)

This week in deals

As a reminder, we may get an affiliate commission for services you sign up for through links in this newsletter, which helps support our site maintenance, at no additional cost to you. Prices are in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, and may change in the future.

• Deals we've mentioned in the past that are still available: six months of Crave Total for $89.94 (through July 7); $40 off the first year of the Fubo Soccer Annual plan (for a "limited time"); Apple TV+ offer for two free months (through July 7, though a similar offer for 3 free months is now available to PC Optimum members through that program's app for an indeterminate amount of time).

Programming news

• We're starting to see posts from major streaming services about July programming, which we're working on collating into our usual monthly guide that should be posted later this week.
   
  A couple of items of note: as noted above, Crave has picked up the early-2010s NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation as of July 1, and will also air Max's Full Circle and Project Greenlight revival in the coming month. Over on Disney+ Canada, season 2 of FX / Hulu's The Bear will debut on July 19, about a month after the U.S. premiere of the new season, while Hulu reality series Drag Me to Dinner will premiere on July 26 after a longer delay.
   
• The 2019 moon landing anniversary special of Stargazing, the BBC astronomy series hosted by Brian Cox (the astronomer, not the Succession star) and Dara Ó Briain, will finally air in Canada on Friday, July 21 on BBC Earth.

Other notes

• As of now, it appears Eastlink's contracts to carry Corus Entertainment specialty channels will indeed expire effective tomorrow, Tuesday, June 27. The only real change from this time last week was Corus executive Troy Reeb making the rounds of Global news programs in affected markets to explain the situation, and in essence saying it's Eastlink's fault for not offering to pay what Corus feels the channels are now worth.
   
  We covered most of this last week, but we also added a long separate post to explain the dispute and some of the options available to Eastlink customers that want to continue to access Corus channels – the two simplest being StackTV on Prime Video, and the Entertainment package on the Fubo streaming platform.
   
• Meanwhile, on top of the staff cuts announced in recent weeks, Bell Media is asking the CRTC for extra flexibility – specifically including removing the obligation to air local news on its CTV, CTV2, and Noovo stations (though it claims it does not currently plan to drop local coverage, at least not entirely). Steve Faguy has already written a comprehensive article examining the proposals, and we will direct you there for further analysis.
   
• A number of U.S. media outlets, led by Deadline, reported this past week that Warner Bros. Discovery was negotiating with Netflix to license non-exclusive rights to recent HBO shows like Insecure, and likely others, to the latter streaming service. None of the articles we've seen have indicated whether any countries beyond the U.S. would get access, but Bell's recent announcement renewing its own WBD deal was unequivocal that "Crave remains the exclusive Canadian home of new, current, and library HBO programming".

Recent updates on WCIW

In addition to our post about the Corus / Eastlink dispute, we have recently updated our privacy policy to reflect our transition to a cookie-free analytics provider, Fathom Analytics, as well as various updates regarding other cookies set by our service providers (in short: there are fewer than there used to be).

Thanks for reading – we greatly appreciate your support. If you like this newsletter, please consider forwarding to a friend who might be interested, or if you're in a position to do so, support our hosting costs with a paid subscription, which includes access to our movie streaming rights database, or on a one-time basis via our Buy Me a Coffee page.

If you're new to Watching This Week, you can catch up on past editions here, and sign up to receive future editions on our website at https://www.wherecaniwatch.ca/newsletter/. Or, if you're reading this on the web, you can use the form directly below.

We'll see you again soon.

Significant revisions

• June 27, 2023 – corrected Infinity Film to Infinity Pool – thanks to reader Gabrielle for pointing out the error