Watching This Week #79

Welcome to the September 12, 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.

This week, updates on Tegan and Sara's High School series, where you can find the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, and a new sign-up offer for Disney+. But first, here's what's coming up on TV and streaming this week.

What's new this week – September 12–18

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). The most notable premiere for each service (in our rough estimation) is bolded.

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ this past Thursday, some scheduling on linear TV channels may remain in flux. The funeral will take place in the early morning (Canada time) next Monday, September 19, but there may be other commemorative events in the coming days that may impact these listings.

*Canadian broadcast/streaming rights to the new season of The Handmaid's Tale are now shared between Amazon and Bell Media; episodes will premiere each week on all three outlets indicated.

• Netflix: Heartbreak High (Aussie drama reboot – Wednesday); Sins of Our Mother (docuseries – Wednesday); Do Revenge (dark comedy film – Friday); Drifting Home (anime film – Friday); Fate: The Winx Saga (season 2 – Friday); Love is Blind (season 2 "After the Altar" specials – Friday); I Used to Be Famous (British drama film – Friday); Jogi (Indian drama film – Friday); Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard (German docufilm – Friday)
• Disney+: Short Circuit ("Reflect" – Wednesday); Best in Dough (cooking competition – Fridays); Mija (documentary – Friday); Leave No Trace (documentary – Friday); Pride: To Be Seen (special – Friday)
• Crave: The Handmaid's Tale (season 5 – Wednesdays*); Ella and the Little Sorcerer (2022 animated film – Friday); Money Plane (2020 action film – Friday); Running with the Devil (2019 action film – Friday); Los Espookys (season 2 – Fridays)
• Prime Video: The Handmaid's Tale (season 5 – Wednesdays*); Goodnight Mommy (American remake of the horror film – Friday); Morbius (2022 superhero film – Friday); The Grand Tour ("A Scandi Flick" – Friday); First Love (2022 romantic drama film – Friday)
• CBC / CBC Gem (CBC TV broadcast times are local times, +30m for Newfoundland time): The North Water (miniseries – Mondays at 9:00 p.m.); Comedy Night with Rick Mercer (stand-up specials – Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m.); Summit 72 (Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m.); War of the Worlds (season 3 – Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m.); numerous season premieres of returning series throughout the week
• CTV: 74th Primetime Emmy Awards (Monday at 8:00 p.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. PT)
• Global (also on StackTV): Monarch (premiere at special time: Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT; Sundays at 8:00 thereafter)
• Citytv (also on Citytv+): The Jennifer Hudson Show (weekday afternoons); Capital One College Bowl (Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT)
• YesTV, CHEK, NTV, U.S. syndication: Wheel of Fortune (syndicated season 40) and Jeopardy! (syndicated season 39) begin Monday; local times vary with no streaming available
• W Network (also on StackTV): Days of Our Lives (moving from Global/NTV – weekdays at 1:00 p.m. ET/PT)
• Showcase (also on StackTV): Tom Swift (Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET)
• CTV Drama: The Handmaid's Tale (season 5 – Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET*)
• Discovery: Deadliest Catch: The Viking Returns (Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET)
• AMC (available on AMC+ on Prime Video and Apple TV):
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Shetland (season 7 – Tuesday)

This week in sales

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 before applicable sales taxes.

• In connection with last week's Disney+ Day event, Disney+ – the Canadian home of shows like Only Murders in the Building, Reservation Dogs, and various other Marvel, Lucasfilm, and FX series – is currently offering a promotional $1.99 price for one month for new and "eligible returning" subscribers, $10 off the usual monthly price. This special rate is available until midnight PT next Monday night, September 19.
   
• For non-cable subscribers interested in sports: Through this Tuesday night (September 13) at midnight ET, TSN is offering a renewable "4-month pass" to its over-the-top streaming version (previously known as TSN Direct) for $59.97, which is the regular price for three months at the monthly rate. Interestingly, this pass seems to be renewable indefinitely, which would work out to be $179.91 for a year, compared to $199.90 for the annual pass.

Programming news

• As mentioned last week (and above), daytime drama Days of Our Lives moves to W Network starting today, September 12. However, if you were expecting anything of note to replace it on the Global schedule... well, think again. For now at least, the replacement – on both Global and NTV – is repeats of HGTV's Property Brothers: Buying & Selling, one of the numerous spinoffs of the Scott brothers media franchise. So, in short, inexpensive Canadian content.
   
• With Amazon's secondary ad-supported streaming service Freevee remaining unlaunched in Canada, Freevee's YA series High School, based on the memoir by Tegan and Sara Quin, will instead be available in Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand, on Prime Video. All eight episodes will be available on Friday, October 28, the same day the final two episodes drop on Freevee in the U.S. and the UK.
   
• For those interested in revisiting the original The Lord of the Rings trilogy given the ongoing release of The Rings of Power on Prime Video, the Peter Jackson films are now available with subscription on both Prime Video and Crave in Canada. They arrived on Crave on Friday; it's not clear how long they've been available on Prime, but they were certainly not available on any subscription service this past December when the trilogy reached its 20th anniversary, as noted at the time by MobileSyrup.
   
• As first noticed by a member of the DigitalHome.ca forums, past seasons of ongoing Star Trek series such as Discovery and Picard have disappeared from the CTV website and app for CTV Sci-Fi subscribers, but remain available on Crave. The newer series haven't yet appeared on Paramount+ in Canada, but given that the latter service now streams past series (still shared with Crave) and all of the Star Trek movies, you can imagine what the trend will eventually lead to. It's also possible that those series will land on Pluto TV, an ad-supported service owned by Paramount, once that service launches in Canada.
   
  In any event, the press releases issued by Paramount this past week about upcoming seasons of ongoing Trek shows indicate those programs will continue to premiere new episodes on CTV Sci-Fi and Crave in Canada, at least for now.
   
• American indie studio A24 has thus far resisted a consistent output deal with a Canadian distributor, with many released by Elevation (e.g. Lady Bird, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), but a few others handled in Canada through LevelFilm (The Last Black Man in San Francisco), Mongrel (The Lobster), and MK2 Mile End (First Cow).
   
  Now, the studio has reached a nine-picture deal with Sphere Films, which recently absorbed MK2 Mile End, including the upcoming Disappointment Blvd. and Aftersun. It's not quite an output deal, but it seems to be the closest thing they've had yet.
   
  Assuming other existing deals hold, that means those films will eventually stream on Crave in Canada in the pay-1 window.

Other notes

• Lisa LaFlamme has been brought on by Rogers as a special correspondent for CityNews coverage of the ongoing events involving the British monarchy. The term "special correspondent" implies that LaFlamme is working on a short-term freelance basis, though presumably opening the door to more in the future.
   
  Whether this points to a longer-term trend in how Citytv will cover international news events, or simply Rogers (the board of which now includes longtime former CTV head Ivan Fecan as a member, following the Rogers family's internal squabbles last year) taking advantage of an opportunity to gain goodwill, is not yet clear.

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.

Christine: Any idea about the new season of The Great British Bake Off streaming in Canada in a timely way? (To be extra extra clear, not the Canadian version.)

WCIW: We posted an article about GBBO – better known in North America as The Great British Baking Show – a couple of years ago, which we’ve updated a few times since (and probably will be updated again very soon).

But, in short, we have not seen any sign of the situation changing. As far as we know, the CBC still has the Canadian rights, and will continue to wait until the following summer before airing the new seasons that air each fall on Channel 4 UK and Netflix in the United States. That will probably remain the case as long as the CBC is willing to pay for those Canadian rights.

So the season currently scheduled to premiere in the coming week in the UK and U.S. will likely air on CBC in summer 2023.

As we mentioned in the post, it’s seemed to work well enough for the CBC in past years – GBBO showed up a couple of times this summer in the top-rated programs on traditional Canadian TV despite the delay – so unfortunately it’s unlikely it’ll change anytime soon.

Jim: Does Crave automatically give the viewer access to all of HBO Max’s streaming shows? There are a few shows that aren’t showing up — Pennyworth especially. Or am I just missing something obvious.

WCIW: Bell Media / Crave’s deal with Warner Bros. Discovery includes Canadian rights to programs airing on the HBO pay TV service, and new scripted “HBO Max Original” programs that were originally ordered by the streaming service. A few HBO Max programs, mostly animated or produced by studios outside of Warner Bros., are covered by other deals and are not available on Crave, as we’ve tried to explain in this post (and that page, as well, is due for an update).

Pennyworth is specifically excluded because it was originally ordered by the Epix channel in the U.S., and at that time the Canadian rights were picked up by Corus Entertainment’s Showcase channel. Even though it’s since moved to HBO Max in the U.S., Showcase still has first right of refusal on new seasons, and they’ve already said they’ll carry the upcoming third season. We imagine the streaming rights to past seasons might be up for grabs separately, but Crave probably wouldn’t want them as long as new episodes are airing, since it’d mostly serve to promote a competitor.

Recent updates on WCIW

We've made some minor updates to our posts about Days of Our Lives and The Good Fight, and added a post about the Primetime Emmy Awards, which takes place tonight.

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