Watching This Week #134

Welcome to the December 18, 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. Read on for news about Jeopardy! UK, Italian series Unwanted, and a new deal on Paramount+, after this week's listings.

First, a quick note about the next few weeks. We are (somehow) already working on the January 2024 listings roundup which should be in your inbox on the first day of the new year, if not before. That's because, fortunately, most services are nice enough to circulate January listings earlier than usual, ahead of the holidays proper.

However, due to travel and vacation (and because, quite frankly, we don't expect much TV programming news to transpire in that time) we anticipate that the two newsletters surrounding that date, on December 25 and January 8, will be abbreviated editions prepared in advance. That means any news of note will likely have to wait for the January 15 edition of Watching This Week. We appreciate your patience and wish you all a very happy holiday season.

What's new this week – December 18–24

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.

• Netflix
  • Series: Supa Team 4 (season 2 – Thursday); Gyeongseong Creature (Korean series, part 1 – Friday)
  • Films: Maestro (Bradley Cooper-as-Leonard Bernstein biopic – Wednesday); Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (Zack Snyder sci-fi film – Friday); Sing 2 (2021 film – Friday)
  • Stand-up: Trevor Noah: Where Was I (Tuesday)
• Disney+
  • Series: Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life (S2 Christmas episode – Wednesday); Dragons of Wonderhatch (Japanese series – Wednesdays); Percy Jackson and the Olympians (reboot series – Wednesdays); What If...? (season 2 – daily from Friday to Dec. 30)
• Crave
  • Crave / Bell Media originals: Acting Good (season 2 – Friday); Fear Thy Neighbour (S9, part 1 – Friday); Listing Large (season 1 – Friday); Nesting (original comedy series – Friday)
  • HBO / Max content: Daniel (HBO doc directed by and featuring filmmaker/adventurer Daniel Northcott – Wednesday*)
  • Films: One Year Off (2023 British comedy – Friday); Somewhere in Queens (2023 comedy – Friday); Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023 animated sequel – Friday); The Weapon (2023 action film – Friday); The Swan Princess: A Fairytale is Born (11th film in series – Sunday)
  • Other licensed programming: Börje: The Journey of a Legend (Viaplay hockey bio-series – Wednesdays); various new seasons of MTV programs (Friday)
• Prime Video
  • Films: Golda (2023 biopic starring Helen Mirren as Golda Meir – Wednesday)
• CBC Gem
  • Series: Station Eleven (2021 HBO Max miniseries – Wednesday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV)
  • Series: Monster High (additional season 1 episodes – Tuesday); Willie Nelson & Family (docuseries – Thursday); Donal MacIntyre's Killer Evidence (British true crime series – Friday)
  • Films: The Expendables 1–3 (2010–14 films – Tuesday); Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun (Canadian doc – Friday); Linoleum (2022 sci-fi comedy film – Friday)
• Apple TV+
  • Series: Sago Mini Friends (New Year's special episode – Friday)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV)
  • Series: Vera (season 12 Christmas special – Wednesday); Would I Lie to You? (season 16 – Friday)

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.

• Paramount+ Canada is now offering 50% off annual plans for new and eligible returning customers, for both its standard (regularly $99.99 per year) and premium (with 4K support – regularly $124.99 per year) tiers. The offer should be available until at least January 2, 2024; it's written "2/1/24" on the service's website so some outlets have claimed availability through February 1, but similar promos in the past have used dates like "27/11/2023".
   
  (Incidentally, since we know some people have been waiting on this, season 4 of P+ series Evil apparently just wrapped filming and is likely to premiere in the first half of 2024.)
   
• Two other deals that remain ongoing: Crave gift cards with $100 in value for $75 (through January 5); CBC Gem Premium for $1 per month for 6 months with code 1FOR6 or TRY6 (also through January 5).

Programming news

• The Blue Ant-operated Canadian version of BBC First has picked up rights to the upcoming new hour-long UK version of Jeopardy! hosted by Stephen Fry, which debuts on ITV1 (and, presumably, STV) in Britain on January 1. While the program(me) will initially air weekdays for a four-week run in the UK, here it will air weekly, Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT starting January 10.
   
  It’s not immediately clear if Blue Ant acquired the rights from Sony, which owns the format and which has part-ownership of the British production company handling this version, Whisper North, or from Paramount, which last we heard technically still controlled international distribution rights to the format.
     
  BBC First has quietly built up a strong block of quiz shows from various British producers/channels in recent months; it had aired QI (also hosted for several seasons series by Fry) at launch, but has since added Impossible, Hypothetical, and the UK version of The Chase.
   
  No word yet on if the upcoming ITV version of Wheel of Fortune – hosted by Graham Norton, whose chat show also airs on BBC First – will follow suit.
   
• Another upcoming series on Showcase: Sky Italia drama series Unwanted appears to be arriving Friday, January 12 (even though the promo on this page gives the date as January 5).
  
• BritBox has updated its Christmas season programming, including release dates for seasonal specials previously listed with to-be-announced dates. For ease of reference we've just added these to the BritBox section of our December listings roundup.

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca). We welcome questions of general interest, and publish a few of them (and our answers) from time to time; messages may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Sylvain: Does the recent deal between Disney and Netflix apply in Canada?

WCIW: The deal in question will see a selection of Disney-controlled programs, like How I Met Your Mother, Home Improvement, and Archer added to Netflix U.S. on a non-exclusive basis at various points in the next year or so, with each series available on Netflix for 18 months in addition to Disney+ and/or Hulu. In exchange, Disney will reclaim co-exclusive U.S. subscription VOD rights to past seasons to Grey's Anatomy, which had been previously exclusively licensed to Netflix in the U.S. and Canada, presumably for as long as the series remains in production.

However, all the coverage we've seen about the deal has described it as a U.S.- or domestic-only deal. It’s certainly possible that Disney will license out more programming to Netflix and other services internationally under its revised strategy – Bell Media channels added Disney-owned series like HIMYM and Futurama this fall, Paramount+ Canada now has non-exclusive rights to Criminal Minds, and even some putative Disney+ exclusives have now had second-run licences in some countries. And as noted the original Grey's deal with Netflix also applied to Canada – preventing it from appearing on Disney+ / Star here – so it's possible something similar could arise in the future.

But there is no evidence to date of this specific deal also covering Canada. Nor have we seen any of the affected shows in the Netflix Canada January listings that have been released on social media or elsewhere (except Archer which has long been available on Netflix Canada under a pre-existing deal).

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