Watching This Week #76

Welcome to the August 22, 2022, 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.

It's been a quiet week for programming news – perhaps the other Canadian media news of the past week (which we touch on very briefly below) influenced that – but there seems to be a new development regarding Elvis on streaming. Plus, we'll analyze the Canadian impact of some moves like HBO Max's content removals (spoiler: it's not much, for now).

But first, as introduced last week, a look at some of the notable premieres on TV and streaming this coming week.

What's new this week – August 22–28

Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. 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).

• Netflix: Mo (comedy series – Wednesday); Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee (documentary film – Thursday); Delhi Crime (season 2 – Friday); Me Time (comedy film – Friday); Partner Track (drama series – Friday); Seoul Time (Korean action film – Friday)
• Disney+: Fearless: The Inside Story of the AFLW (docuseries – Wednesdays); Mormon No More (docuseries – Wednesday); Motherland: Fort Salem (season 3 – Wendesdays); Mike (Mike Tyson bio-series – Thursdays)
• Crave: Katrina Babies (HBO documentary film – Wednesday at 9pm ET); Star Trek: Lower Decks (season 3 – Thursdays); American Underdog (Kurt Warner biopic – Friday); Death on the Nile (mystery film – Friday); Sophie Buddle: Smile, Baby (stand-up special – Friday)
• Prime Video: 9 Bullets (thriller film – Wednesday); Big Gold Brick (dark comedy film – Friday); Measure of Revenge (thriller film – Friday); Samaritan (action film – Friday); Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby (documentary film – Friday)
• CBC Gem: Highlife (British reality series – Monday); Splinters (drama film – Saturday)
• Apple TV+: See (season 3 – Fridays)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe (miniseries – Aug. 23)
• AMC (available on AMC+ on Prime Video and Apple TV): Kevin Can F**k Himself (season 2 – Mondays at 9p ET)
• FX (also on Citytv+): Welcome to Wrexham (docuseries – Wednesdays at 10p ET)
• FXX (also on Citytv+): Little Demon (adult animated sitcom – Thursdays at 10p ET)

Programming news

• Elvis appears to be finally set to come to Crave early next month. The Baz Luhrmann-directed, Warner Bros.-released film, released in theatres in June, has appeared on the Crave 1 linear schedule for Saturday, September 3, suggesting it would be available to stream on September 2, or potentially even earlier that week.
   
  Also likely coming to Crave that weekend: the 2021 Blumhouse film A House on the Bayou, which appears on the Crave 1 schedule for September 2.
   
• Global has confirmed premiere dates for its fall primetime programming. There's no real surprises, given that most of the premieres are simulcasts with American networks that already announced these premieres, except that Global will be sticking with Abbott Elementary and Home Economics in the 9:00 p.m. ET/PT hour on Wednesdays, with The Real Love Boat at 10:00 p.m. even though CBS has now moved that show to 9:00.
   
  For those who've been asking in light of the NBC / Peacock move, that announcement gave no further word either way about Global's daytime programming like Days of Our Lives, though we think no news still means DOOL will remain on Global in Canada after mid-September.
   
• HBO Max has announced another group of programs being removed from its service, reportedly at least in part to cut down on residuals the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned service has to pay on series that, at least according to some, were not being watched very much on that service.
   
  As of last check this past weekend, programs like Generation, About Last Night, and My Mom, Your Dad remain available on Crave in Canada (as do previous HBO Max withdrawals like Vinyl, Camping, and Craftopia). But many of the programs listed had never actually been added to Crave. Some of the shows that got the most attention for their removals, like Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island,  presumably were part of WBD's Cartoon Network / animation output deal with Corus, though it's not entirely clear whether recent seasons of the affected shows did make air in Canada, and they're not on StackTV now (though, like in the U.S., they mostly remain available for digital purchase).
   
  And while Crave did recently add some classic Sesame Street episodes (in addition to the past few seasons), there have only ever been 20 of those older episodes on Crave, not the hundreds that were added (and now, apparently, mostly removed) from HBO Max.

Other notes

• You may have heard about some changes in the anchor lineup at CTV's national newscast this past week, which was covered quite a bit by other media outlets throughout the week. We don't have much to add to the discourse in this newsletter, except to point you to this excellent summary of what is and isn't known at this point from Steve Faguy.
   
• In other Bell Media news, as part of its marketing campaign for House of the Dragon, annual subscriptions to the "Crave Total" streaming plan are currently on sale for new, returning, and upgrading subscribers at $149.90 for the first year – $50 off the regular annual price, and equivalent to about $12.50 per month (compared to the regular monthly price of $19.99). All prices are, of course, before applicable sales tax.
   
• Disney+ has hired a director of content for Canada – Stephanie Azam, most recently at film distributor MK2 Mile End (absorbed into Sphere Media earlier this year) but prior to that an executive at Telefilm Canada. Some outlets have speculated that this could mean Disney+ is looking at commissioning original Canadian programming, much like Netflix and Prime Video have done.
   
• My thanks to Jared Lindzon for the opportunity to provide insight for his piece for The Globe and Mail published this past week, discussing the growth of streaming service options in Canada, ideas for keeping your budget manageable given how widely spread out the buzziest new shows are these days, and how packaging of these services could evolve in the future.

Recent updates on WCIW

We've added posts in the past week about She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Thursdays on Disney+), House of the Dragon (Sundays on Crave – and now expected to be streaming in 4K in Canada after all, though we did not have an opportunity to verify this on Sunday night), and Selena + Chef (Thursdays on Crave – we added the post mainly to show how to access the show's recipes in Canada, because the web address shown in the show itself is geoblocked).

We also updated our page about Days of Our Lives, but only to explain (with examples) that just because a show moves to streaming in the U.S. does not necessarily mean that show has to move to streaming in Canada as well.

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We'll see you again next week.