This Week in WCIW #66

Hi, and welcome to the May 9, 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.

It's been a fairly slow week for programming news, but we have updates on Canadian airdates for a few Peacock shows, plus some answers to recent mailbag questions. Let's get into it.

Programming news

The only programming news of relevance to this site we could spot this week was a few confirmations from Showcase made on social media about Peacock original series premiering in the next few months. As usual, Showcase and parent company Corus aren't really bothering to match the U.S. release dates on Peacock, just airing the series when they think it'll work best for their scheduling purposes.

Scripted comedies Bust Down (starring Sam Jay and Chris Redd – U.S. premiere March 10) and Killing It (starring Craig Robinson – U.S. premiere March 31) will both air Tuesdays starting May 31.

The Queer as Folk reboot helmed by Newfoundland writer Stephen Dunn (U.S. premiere June 9) will air Sundays starting June 26, while unscripted series So Dumb It's Criminal Hosted by Snoop Dogg (U.S. premiere April 20) will air on Tuesdays from July 12.

A few other Peacock series have recently announced U.S. return dates, like season 2 of Rutherford Falls premiering June 16 – no word yet on when these new seasons will air in Canada.

Mid-morning update: Disney has just confirmed that direct-to-Hulu FX series Under the Banner of Heaven, which was filmed in Calgary and stars Andrew Garfield, will premiere on Disney+ in Canada on June 8. (It premiered in the U.S. on April 28.)

Other notes

• A couple of weeks ago we posted a mailbag question from a reader about if/when Paramount+ would be available on Prime Video Channels in Canada, and suggested that it was unlikely to happen. It seems we were wrong about that. Paramount+ appeared as a channel on Prime Video in Canada in the past few days – still at $5.99 per month, the same price as its direct and Apple TV Channels versions.
• In case you missed the news over the weekend, the Rogers-Shaw merger now seems to be in significant doubt due to opposition by the Competition Bureau. It's possible it could be resolved by selling Freedom Mobile to a well-financed owner like Quebecor that would be able to keep it a viable competitor, whereas previous stories pointed to a sale to a much smaller rival like Xplornet (if Rogers was forced to sell at all).

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca) or Twitter (@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.

Katalin: Please let me know where to stream season 3 of Three Bedrooms in Canada.

Answer: As far as we know, W Network / StackTV (which aired the first two seasons) should have the rights to season 3 in Canada as well, but it’s up to them to decide when they want to premiere it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they waited until summer or fall to air the new season in Canada.

Shane: Do you know if Showcase or StackTV will be showing the Peacock series Killing It? And what about the Epix series From?

Answer: As noted above, Showcase has confirmed that they will be airing Killing It starting on May 31. As for From, everything we've seen indicates it’ll be distributed by Netflix everywhere outside the U.S., including in this production announcement.

(Shane also asked about Israeli series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, which had a U.S. pickup from Netflix, but eventually forwarded word from its distributor Yes Studios confirming only that they are still working out a Canadian outlet for that series – thanks for that!)

Recent updates on WCIW

Early last week, we added a post about the syndicated game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, two shows that haven't had a consistent home across Canada in recent years, in light of the recent run of a certain Canadian contestant on the latter program.

We've also published a new version of our Eurovision Song Contest post to reflect the Canadian broadcast situation for this year, which is basically just streaming on YouTube (no traditional broadcast in Canada on Omni, unlike last year).

Also, some readers may have noticed the site search (in the left sidebar) wasn't working in recent weeks, due to what seems to be a known issue with DuckDuckGo and... sites dealing with finding media content, we guess? We've now switched this search box to use Google instead.

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We'll see you again next week.