This Week in WCIW #59

Happy Monday! Welcome to the March 7, 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.

This was a relatively quiet week for TV news, but it does give us an opportunity to catch up on some mailbag questions about Drive My Car, Counterpart, and more. But first...

Programming news

• This year's edition of the British Academy Film Awards – also commonly called "the BAFTAs" after its presenting organization – will be available exclusively on BritBox in Canada, the U.S., and South Africa. The show takes place on Sunday, March 13, and will be available to stream on BritBox "as live with the UK" that day. From 2017 to 2021, the ceremony had aired in Canada on Hollywood Suite.
   
• Crave has quietly added the two-part HBO Max documentary Gaming Wall St., about the 2021 short squeezes of companies like GameStop and AMC, to its lineup this past Thursday, after not being included on its monthly listings. Crave's linear listings for the month also indicate that the second season of the Rose Matafeo comedy series Starstruck, released in the UK earlier this year, will be available on March 24, the same day as HBO Max in the United States.
   
• FXX Canada has (perhaps even more quietly) added FXX U.S.'s Dicktown, the adult animated series starring John Hodgman and David Rees, airing Thursday nights at 10:00 p.m. ET. The Canadian channel did not air the series' previous iteration as a segment of Cake, though we noticed this week that the first four seasons of that series were available on-demand through Rogers (but not the FXNow website / app), in addition to its availability on Disney+. We've added a separate post with further information about Dicktown.
   
• For the third year in a row, Super Channel will be hosting an at-home version of the Canadian Film Fest, with domestically-produced films premiering nightly on Super Channel Fuse from Tuesday, March 22, to Saturday, April 3, and a rebroadcast of the winning films on April 4. As with past editions, the movies will only air on the Fuse linear channel during this run, and will not be available on-demand.

Other notes

• As of this writing, Paramount+ is offering 50% off for one month to new subscribers in Canada (in addition to the seven-day free trial) – so $2.99 (plus applicable sales taxes) for the first month instead of the usual $5.99, most likely ending today (March 7). It's not as good as the deal being offered in the U.S., but it's an offer nonetheless.

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently at hello@wherecaniwatch.ca or through our Twitter account @wherewatchtv. 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.

Neasa: I saw that you’ve listed Counterpart, which is a Starz series, as available on Starz Canada & Crave. Unfortunately that no longer seems to be the case. I’ve searched Amazon Prime and Netflix as well and can’t seem to find it – it doesn’t seem to be available on any Canadian service at the moment. Please let me know you have any updates on this series.

Good question. Counterpart is an interesting case – it was cancelled by Starz U.S. in early 2019; soon thereafter, while the studio behind the series (MRC) sought a new home, the American service dropped the series entirely from its on-demand offerings. Eventually, the existing seasons landed on Prime Video in the U.S. but that service declined to order further seasons.

The series initially remained available via Crave / Starz in Canada, but they indicated in their December 2021 listings that their rights to Counterpart expired that month, and it’s not clear right now if another service will pick up the streaming rights in Canada.

For some reason it still seems to be possible to watch season 1 through the version of Starz sold as an add-on to Prime Video Canada, but that may just be a temporary oversight.

Beyond that, it’s still possible to buy both seasons of Counterpart on iTunes and maybe elsewhere.

Subsequent to receiving this question, we updated our page about Starz programming to reflect Counterpart's current availability.

Andy: Where can I watch Drive My Car?

We've added a new post specifically about the acclaimed Japanese film, but in short, it's still in Canadian theatres, and available for digital rental or purchase on iTunes. While it's now streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. as of this past week, the distribution situation is different in Canada, and it probably won't be available on a subscription streaming service here for another few months.

Ryan: I was wondering if you know what happened to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in Canada on Paramount+. I have Paramount+ as an Apple TV channel, and this past week The Late Show just disappeared.

For what it's worth, we finally bit the bullet ourselves this weekend and signed up for a direct subscription to Paramount+, and can confirm the result that Ryan saw. Early this past week, The Late Late Show with James Corden was still listed as being available on P+ on the Apple TV app, but it's now clear it has been pulled as well.

We're not sure what happened here – both late-night talk shows are fully owned and distributed by Paramount (formerly ViacomCBS), so the company should be able to stream them on Paramount+ if they want to.

But it's our understanding, from complaints and comments elsewhere, that the Canadian version of Paramount+ has been dropping some of the older CBS programming over the past few months in favour of more movies and originals. Perhaps there are residuals (additional fees to actors and producers) that they can't justify based on the viewership, perhaps it's a strategy to give the service more of a premium feel or something like that, but whatever the cause, it does seem very strange to drop series they own and have been carrying for a while.

Of course, The Late Show still airs in Canada on Global, and the most recent week of episodes is still available on the Global TV website/app, where it’s available with ads but no cable subscription seems to be required. Recent episodes of The Late Late Show are similarly available on the CTV website/app.

Recent updates on WCIW

As noted above, we've added posts about Dicktown and Drive My Car, and updated our March guide to reflect some of the items discussed this week, as well as the (second) postponement of HBO's Larry David documentary. We've also made some overdue updates to our overall post about Peacock programming in Canada.

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We'll see you again next week.