Posted January 24, 2022 • Last updated January 24, 2022

This Week in WCIW #53

Updates for mid-January 2022 about "Resident Alien", "RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs The World", and more.

We use affiliate links to help support the costs of hosting this website. If you make a purchase or sign up for a service using these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more here.

Welcome to the January 24, 2022 edition of This Week in WCIW, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada.

The news was a bit slower this week, but we do have updates about shows like Resident Alien, RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs The World, Latin American drama The Envoys, and more.


Programming news

  • Netflix (via social media including the linked YouTube video) and Disney+ (via listings sent to other outlets) have announced their new releases for February in Canada. We'll summarize in our monthly listings roundup next Monday.
     
  • This wasn't in our January listings so we'll mention it now: the second season of Resident Alien – the comics adaptation starring Alan Tudyk – will air on Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET on CTV Sci-Fi starting this week, on January 26 – the same time as Syfy in the U.S. The new series Astrid & Lilly Save the World, also from Syfy, follows at 10:00 p.m.
     
  • Although Crave has not yet released its full programming plans for February, some information is trickling out through on-air promos and TV listings. For example, RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs The World will premiere on Tuesday, February 1; Swedish limited series The Congregation will be available starting on Wednesday, February 2; the 2019 film Waves will be available on Friday, February 4; Free Guy (a 20th Century film already on Disney+ in Canada) will air on February 5 (and likely be streaming on the 4th); 2020 British film Dream Horse on Saturday, February 19; and 2021 indie film Ride the Eagle on Friday, February 25.

    Additionally, HBO Max's Take Out with Lisa Ling, a docuseries about Asian-American food which was not previously mentioned in Crave's January listings, will apparently drop on Crave alongside its U.S. release this Thursday, January 27.
     
  • With the recent shift in Star Trek: Discovery streaming rights from Netflix back to ViacomCBS (and hence Paramount+ and Pluto TV) in much of the world, it wouldn't be surprising if the company had been looking at getting the Canadian rights to the various current Star Trek series back from Bell Media as well.
     
    But if it was, there's no sign that such a move is imminent: this past week's announcement of new seasons for Discovery (season 5) and the forthcoming Strange New Worlds (season 2), among other updates, confirms that Canadian rights to the Star Trek franchise will remain with CTV Sci-Fi and Crave for the foreseeable future.
     
  • Paramount+ premiered an English dub of Spanish-language series The Envoys [Los Enviados], in multiple markets, including Canada, this past Thursday, January 20. The series stars Luis Gerardo Méndez and Miguel Ángel Silvestre among others who previously starred in series like the Narcos franchise and Sense8. The program debuted on Par+ in Latin America last month.
     
  • Crave has picked up Canadian rights to upcoming British fashion docuseries Kingdom of Dreams from distributor Fremantle, alongside HBO Max in its European, Latin American, and Asian markets (but, oddly, seemingly not the U.S., at least at this point) and Sky Group in its (separate) European markets.
     
  • This is more of a curiosity for us than anything else (and nothing to do with streaming), but CTV is cutting its stations' local 6:00 p.m. newscasts to 30 minutes this coming Wednesday in order to accommodate etalk, which is airing at 6:30 local (instead of its usual 7:00 ET/PT slot or simply being pre-empted) because (a) it's a special tied to that day being Bell Let's Talk Day, and (b) The Amazing Race is scheduled for the 7:00 p.m. ET/PT hour, and that show apparently has to air then (pre-CBS at 9:00 ET) because of other commitments like Children Ruin Everything and Next Level Chef between 8:00-10:00 ET. We don't recall any similar pre-emptions of CTV local newscasts on a non-holiday weekday in quite some time.

Other notes

  • Corus announced a little over a week ago in its quarterly results that there will finally be a place other than Prime Video to get its StackTV streaming package – Rogers' Ignite TV and SmartStream, its latest-generation IPTV platforms based on Comcast's X1 stack.

    StackTV certainly makes sense on SmartStream, which is Rogers' standalone streaming device that operates solely with streaming services, not the regulated cable TV system. On the other hand, all of the channels packaged in StackTV are already available in Ignite TV as part of regular cable packages – though perhaps it still makes sense as an alternative to the genre-based theme packs that are already offered.

Recent updates on WCIW


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 This Week in WCIW, 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 next week with our guide to new programming in February.

Want to stay in the loop about TV and streaming in Canada?

We now offer an email newsletter about once a week, with news about harder-to-find programs coming to Canadian TV and streaming, and a list of recent updates to our site. Subscribe (for free!) below.

Where Can I Watch is published by Joshua Gorner, North York, Ontario, and is not affiliated with any broadcaster or streaming service. Our email address is hello@wherecaniwatch.ca (additional contact information available on request). We will store and use your address as described in our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time; see our Newsletter page for more details.

One more thing...

Where Can I Watch is an independent, bootstrapped web publication. We don't like to clutter our site with automated web ads, so we depend on our readers to support our hosting and maintenance costs.

If you find our posts useful, please consider a one-time donation through our Buy Me a Coffee page.

We use affiliate links to help support the costs of hosting this website. If you make a purchase or sign up for a service using these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more here.

This site is intended only for residents of Canada. It uses cookies for analytics and traffic management purposes. Please review our Privacy Policy for more information.