Watching This Week #83

Joshua Gorner -

Hi, and happy Thanksgiving. Welcome to the October 10, 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, but we do have a few minor programming updates, some new deals, and we discuss how the rebranding of U.S. pay service Epix as MGM+ might affect Canada. But first, as usual, here's what's ahead this week.

What's new this week – October 10–16

Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. We strive for accuracy but schedules may change without notice. 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: lliza Shlesinger: Hot Forever (stand-up special – Tuesday); Easy-Bake Battle (competition series – Wednesday); The Sinner (season 4 – Thursday); Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal (travelogue series – Thursday); Mismatched (season 2 – Friday); The Curse of Bridge Hollow (family comedy film – Friday)
  • Disney+: Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War (anime series – Monday); Grimcutty (horror film – Monday); Ally McBeal (1997–2002 series – Wednesday); Children of the Underground (FX docuseries – Wednesday); Everything's Trash (season 1 of the Freeform comedy series – Wednesday); Mormon No More (ABC News docuseries – Wednesday); Rookie Cops (K-drama – Wednesday); Welcome to Wrexham (FX soccer docuseries – Thursday); Rosaline (rom-com film – Friday)
  • Crave: 38 at the Garden (Jeremy Lin doc – Tuesday); Hell of a Week with Charlamagne tha God (2022 season – Friday); Redeeming Love (Christian romance film – Friday); The Secret Garden (2020 film version – Friday); Survive (thriller film – Friday)
  • Prime Video: Morbius (2022 Sony/Marvel film – now available to stream after previously being announced for September); various international films from Nigeria, India, and elsewhere premiering throughout the week
  • CBC Gem: Jamie's Ultimate Veg (food series with Jamie Oliver – Monday); Diggstown (season 4 – Wednesdays, also on CBC TV); L'essence des souvenirs (short doc – Friday); The Ravenous (2017 horror film – Friday); Tribal (season 1 of the APTN drama – Friday)
  • Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Never Seen Again (docuseries, seasons 1–3 – Tuesday); Beavis and Butt-Head ("select remastered episodes" from original run – Friday)
  • BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Toast of London (2013–15 sitcom – Oct. 13); The Jonathan Ross Show (18 episodes – Oct. 13)
  • Showcase (also on StackTV): Pennyworth (season 3 – Tuesdays)
  • W Network (also on StackTV): Sex with Sue (Sue Johanson documentary – Monday)
  • CTV Sci-Fi: The Winchesters (Supernatural prequel series – Tuesdays); Eli Roth Presents: My Possessed Pet (anthology series –Tuesdays)
  • T+E: "Creep Week" event continues through Sunday with new seasons of various docuseries
  • Starz (also available as a channel on Crave, Prime Video and Apple TV): Step Up (season 3 – Sundays)

This week in deals

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 in Canadian dollars before applicable sales taxes, and may change in the future.

  • Amazon.ca is having its Prime Early Access Sale – basically, another sale along the lines of Prime Day, and again available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers – this Tuesday and Wednesday, October 11 and 12. While we don't know specifics yet about the sales in Canada, past Amazon sales for Prime Day and Black Friday in Canada have typically included deals on Amazon Fire streaming devices, digital rentals and purchases on the Prime Video Store, as well as discounts when adding new add-on channels, like StackTV, Paramount+, and Starz, through Prime Video.
     
  • With the new NHL season and the MLB postseason getting underway this week, Sportsnet is offering a discounted rate of $199.99 – $50 off the regular annual price – for one year of its Sportsnet Now Premium streaming service, which basically bundles the Sportsnet cable channels (which are $149.99 per year to stream on their own) with the former NHL Live out-of-market streaming package, and programming from Sportsnet World and WWE Network.
     
    The service is intended for cordcutters – if you have a cable package that includes the core Sportsnet channels, you essentially already have the same streaming access that's included in SN Now Standard. But there's no way to upgrade directly to the premium version as a cable subscriber; you'd just have to subscribe to the corresponding cable packages (NHL Centre Ice, Sportsnet World, and WWE Network) piecemeal. So depending on how much of that you want, it might still work out to be a good deal.

Programming news

  • Blue Ant's Love Nature channel is expanding its shark-focused "FinFest" programming event, which starts today (October 10) and runs through Sunday, October 16. The highlight this year is Planet Shark, a three-part docuseries about various shark species "[u]sing the latest tracking and high-speed camera technologies", which premieres Saturday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT, and will also be available to stream on the Prime Video and Apple TV channel versions of the service.
     
  • The animated news satire series Stephen Colbert Presents: Tooning Out the News, which was previously available on Paramount+ in Canada, has moved to CTV Comedy Channel alongside its move to Comedy Central in the U.S. – and past seasons no longer seem to be available on P+ in Canada either.

Other notes

  • We'd meant to mention this last week, but it slipped our mind at the time: MGM announced a couple of weeks ago that its U.S. premium service Epix – which has commissioned programming such as Godfather of Harlem and the first two seasons of Pennyworth – will be rebranding as MGM+, as of January 15. This puts to rest speculation that the service would just shut down entirely, or merge into new MGM parent Amazon's Prime Video streaming service.
     
    Interestingly, there is already an MGM add-on channel available through Prime Video in Canada, among several other countries, which mainly features classic films from the MGM (post-1986) and United Artists libraries. It's not yet clear whether these international offerings could become part of MGM+, though even if it does, it might just keep its current programming focus rather than pulling in originals from its U.S. equivalent – think the early days of Paramount+ in Canada.

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.

E C: Just wondering where & when in Canada we can watch the latest season of Outlander, if ever?

WCIW: The most recent (sixth) season of Outlander aired on W Network / StackTV in Canada from March to May of this year, at the same time as Starz in the U.S. Unfortunately, W Network only has short-term streaming rights to each episode of Outlander for a few weeks after broadcast.

Now that that window has expired, you’ll have to either buy the season from a digital retailer like the Apple TV / iTunes Store, or wait for it to arrive on Netflix, which still has the past-season streaming rights in Canada.

However, it’s common in scenarios like these for the previous season to arrive on streaming just before the next season starts on W Network (compare with, for example, how past seasons of Grey's Anatomy or Better Call Saul would only be added days before the next one starts) – so it may be several more months before season 6 of Outlander is available on Netflix Canada.

Sylvain: Any plans of adding French content, in the near future, on Paramount+ Canada?

WCIW: Not that we've heard about. The English- and French-language programming rights markets in Canada are separate, so it's certainly possible there are some French-language rights that Paramount has sold (or can't yet reclaim), even if it has held onto or reclaimed the English-language rights.

Beyond that, Paramount+ will be launching in France later this year, so perhaps even if it has the necessary rights for French-speaking Canada, there may some technical dependency there.

Shortly after publishing our newsletter last week, which included a Mailbag question about availability of The Roku Channel in Canada, Roku provided a statement, essentially confirming what we already know, with no indication of pending changes: "Currently, The Roku Channel is only available to Canadian users with a Roku device."

Recent updates on WCIW

We've updated our monthly guide for October a couple of times to add a few items we'd initially missed or overlooked, including Welcome to Wrexham (Oct. 13 on Disney+ after the season previously aired on FX – thanks Sylvain), Showtime docuseries The Lincoln Project (this past Friday on Crave), and season 52 of Sesame Street (this past Saturday on Crave).

We also added a new post ahead of this past weekend's American League Wild Card Series.

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We'll see you again next week.