Watching This Week #89

Welcome to the November 21, 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 another fairly light news week, but read on for news about the revived Australian soap Neighbours streaming in Canada, plus a bunch of Black Friday week deals.

What's new this week – November 21–27

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). Particularly notable or anticipated premieres (in our rough estimation) is bolded. *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about since our last newsletter.

• Netflix: Trevor Noah: I Wish You Would (stand-up special – Tuesday); Christmas on Mistletoe Farm (family film – Wednesday); The Swimmers (drama film – Wednesday); Wednesday (Addams Family spin-off series – Wednesday); The Noel Diary (romcom film – Thursday); Blood and Water (season 3 – Friday); Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich (doc – Friday)
• Disney+: Welcome to Chippendales (Hulu miniseries – Tuesdays); Big Bet (Korean series – Wednesday); Daddies on Request (Mexican series – Wednesday); The Santa Clauses (Tim Allen films spin-off miniseries – Wednesdays); past seasons of various A+E Networks series including The First 48 (Wednesday); The Hip Hop Nutcracker (ballet reimagining – Friday)
• Crave: Santa Camp (HBO Max doc – Thursday, Nov. 17*); Shaq (HBO docuseries – Wednesdays); Love, Lizzo (HBO Max documentary – Thursday); We're Here (season 3 – Fridays); Doula (dramedy film – Friday); Panhandle (season 1 of the comedy-drama series – Friday)
• Prime Video: Good Night Oppy (Mars rover doc – Wednesday); I Love My Dad (comedy film – Thursday); Everything Everywhere All at Once (absurdist dramedy film – Friday); Meet Cute (rom-com film – Friday)
• CBC Gem: Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs holiday special (Wednesday); Living Wild: How to Change Your Life (docuseries – Friday); Call the Midwife holiday special (Friday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Smile (horror film – Tuesday, Nov. 15*); A Sexplanation (doc – Tuesday); Bandit (crime film – Friday); Fantasy Football (family film – Friday);
• Apple TV+: Echo 3 (Colombian series – premieres Wednesday; continues Fridays starting Dec. 2)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Utopia (2013–14 series – Wednesday)
• Starz (also available as an add-on/channel on Crave, Prime Video, and Apple TV): Dragon (2022 action film? – Friday)
• CTV / TSN: 2022 FIFA World Cup – games all week (mostly on TSN) including Belgium vs. Canada (Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET); Croatia vs. Canada (Sunday at 11:00 a.m. ET)

This week in deals

As a reminder, we may get an affiliate commission for services you sign up for or products you buy 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.

• Paramount+, having recently raised its regular Canadian pricing to $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, is now offering 50% off one month or one year to new and returning subscribers (meaning $4.99 or $49.99 respectively). The offer is available until November 28, according to a marketing email we received.
   
• As is common for Black Friday, Prime Video is offering several of its add-on channels, including Starz, Citytv+, AMC+, and BritBox, for $1.99 per month for two months for new and returning subscribers. (The Prime Video Channels version of Paramount+ is not participating this time, nor is StackTV.)
   
  And of course, Amazon.ca itself has a lot of other early Black Friday deals, and will likely have more as the week goes on.
   
• Just in time for the World Cup, TSN has posted two limited-time offers for its streaming-only service: a recurring four-month pass for $49.96 (equivalent to $12.49 per month), or an annual subscription $119.90 (equivalent to about $9.99 per month). (The same offer is also available for French-language equivalent service RDS.)
   
  Also still available from Bell Media: Crave Total for $119.90 per year ($80 off the regular annual price) through November 29.

Programming news

• Until its UK cancellation earlier this year by Paramount-owned Channel 5 – which had provided most of its funding – Australian soap opera Neighbours was a long-running fixture in its home country as well as the UK, but had only aired intermittently in Canada, most recently on OutTV.
   
  However, its reinstatement through a new deal between Amazon and production company Fremantle – which will see the series move to Freevee in the UK and the U.S. – also means the series will now stream in Canada on Prime Video, once the series resumes airing in the second half of 2023. This presumably also covers Canadian rights to the "thousands of previous episodes" which will stream on Freevee in advance of the relaunch.
   
• Bell Media has picked up Canadian rights to Siegfried & Roy: The Original Tiger Kings, a documentary about the long-running Las Vegas act produced for U.S. channel Reelz, from distributor BossaNova. No airdate has been announced.
   
• The first two episodes of Disney+ Star Wars series Andor will air on the ABC broadcast network this Thursday starting at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT, along with broadcasts that weekend on some of Disney's other U.S. cable networks (but not their Canadian equivalents). The rest of the series will remain exclusive to Disney+.

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.

Gary: I understand that the new ten episode Criminal Minds series on Paramount+ will not be available on the streamer in Canada. Do you have any insight? Is this a rights issue and are there plans to show on a Canadian network?

WCIW: As you might know, the original Criminal Minds series and its earlier spinoffs currently stream on Disney+ in Canada. That’s because ABC Studios co-produced the series with CBS, and as part of that Disney got the distribution rights to the series outside the U.S. while CBS retained American streaming rights.

The Disney-owned studio (now ABC Signature) continues to be a co-producer of Criminal Minds: Evolution, so our assumption is that Disney has first dibs on the new series in Canada and elsewhere outside the U.S., though why they haven’t announced anything yet isn’t clear – perhaps there’s something still unsettled there.

But regardless, we very much doubt it’ll be streaming in Canada on any service other than Disney+ or Paramount+. (Though the first episode – and only that episode – will be airing this Thursday, November 24, at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.)

Update (Nov. 21 midday): Shortly after publication, it came to our attention (including through a couple of readers) that late last week, Disney+ began promoting the availability of Criminal Minds: Evolution in Canada starting this Thursday Friday, November 25.

Grant: Any idea when (or if) British series Rogue Heroes will be available in Canada? It looks like a banger from the creator of Peaky Blinders. The U.S. premiere was just recently on Epix, it looks like Prime Video bought the rights in Canada but there's no sign of it there yet.

WCIW: We have not seen a date announced for it on Prime Video in Canada yet, but you’re right, that seems to be where it will be headed eventually. We're not sure of the reason for the delay, it initially came out in the UK late last month.

One (distant) possibility: with the planned relaunch of Epix in the U.S. as MGM+ early next year, it’s conceivable that Amazon (which, of course, now owns MGM) could relaunch the existing MGM add-on channel on Prime Video Canada as MGM+ as well. If that happens, it might decide to shift Rogue Heroes to that service in Canada to simplify marketing a bit. That’s really just a long-shot guess, though.

Sylvain: Will future Star Trek series, like Section 31 and Starfleet Academy, be going straight to Paramount+ Canada, since early seasons of Picard and Discovery were recently added there, or staying on Crave?

WCIW: Up to this point, it's seemed that Bell Media has had right of first refusal on the various Star Trek TV series that have popped up from Discovery onwards, even picking up programs like animated kids series Prodigy that seem like a less obvious fit for Bell's properties.

The fact that early seasons of Discovery and Picard are now on Paramount+ suggests that this might have changed, but it's not entirely clear yet. Long term, of course, it seems like things are pointing toward Paramount bringing the franchise fully in-house as soon as practical.

Sean: I read that Pluto TV will be available in Canada as of December 1. Will it be the same content from the U.S., or will there be Canadian channels instead?

WCIW: We would not count on the service having all the channels or programming available on the U.S. version of Pluto TV. The only programs that have been explicitly announced come from Paramount/CBS (like NCIS), Corus (e.g. Love It or List It), and The Asylum (producers of the Sharknado franchise).

It's likely that other programs or channels would have to be separately licensed for Canada – there are still residuals involved – but we expect that more programming will come online on the Canadian version over time.

Recent updates on WCIW

The only update of note this past week was a new post about FX miniseries Fleishman is in Trouble, which debuted this past week on Disney+ in Canada.

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