Watching This Week #91

Welcome to the December 5, 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.

Read on for CBC's winter programming plans, CTV's holiday plans, and an update on when the new season of Pennyworth will air on Canadian TV. But first, here's what's ahead this week.

What's new this week – December 5–11

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). *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about since our last newsletter, or upcoming programs that we neglected to include in our monthly listings.

• Netflix: Mighty Express: Mighty Trains Race (kids special – Monday); The Boss Baby: Christmas Bonus (kids special – Tuesday); Sebastian Maniscalco: Is It Me? (stand-up special – Tuesday); Emily the Criminal (crime thriller film – Wednesday); Too Hot to Handle (season 4 – Wednesdays); Lookism (anime series – Thursday); Cat (Indian series – Friday); Dragon Age: Absolution (anime series – Friday); Dream Home Makeover (season 4 – Friday); Mortal Kombat (2021 film – Friday)
• Disney+: Amsterdam (period comedy-thriller film – Wednesday); The Come Up (Freeform docuseries – Wednesday); Connect (Korean series – Wednesday); Muppet Babies (season 3 – Wednesday); The Mysterious Benedict Society (season 2 – Wednesday); Quantico (2015–18 ABC series – Wednesday); Raven's Home (season 5 – wednesday); The Villains of Valley View (Disney Channel series – Wednesday); What We Do in the Shadows (season 4 – Wednesday); Solo Amor y Mil Canciones (music doc – Thursday); Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage? (documentary – Friday*); It's a Wonderful Binge (horror sequel – Friday); Night at the Museum: Mahmunrah Rises Again (animated sequel – Friday*); Weekend Family Christmas special (Friday)
• Crave: His Dark Materials (season 3 – Mondays); Women Who Rock (docuseries – Monday); Unveiled: Surviving La Luz del Mundo (HBO docuseries – Tuesdays); Benediction (2021 war biopic – Friday);  Children Ruin Everything (season 2, part 1 of the CTV series – Friday); Marry Me (2022 romcom film – Friday); Random Acts of Flyness (season 2 – Fridays); Transplant (season 3, part 1 of the CTV series – Friday); Steppin' Into the Holiday (Christmas film – Sunday)
• Prime Video: SAS: Rogue Heroes (British drama series – Friday); Cyrano (2021 drama film – Friday); Detective Knight: Redemption (action film – Friday); Something from Tiffany's (Christmas film – Friday)
• CBC Gem: Avoidance (British comedy series – Monday); Kid Sister (New Zealand comedy series – Friday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Confess, Fletch (2022 comedy film with Jon Hamm – Tuesday); The Visitor (2022 horror film – Tuesday)
• Apple TV+: Emancipation (film – Friday); Little America (season 2 – Dec. 9); Puppy Place (season 2 – Dec. 9);
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): As Time Goes By reunion special (Dec. 6)
• W Network (also on StackTV): Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin (film spin-off series with Adam DeVine – Thursdays, two episodes weekly)
• CTV Sci-Fi: Doom Patrol (season 4 – Thursdays; also on Crave)
• E! / NBC: 2022 People's Choice Awards (Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT)
• Starz (also available as an add-on/channel on Crave, Prime Video, and Apple TV): The Rising (British series – Sundays)

Programming news

• CBC Television has announced its winter programming plans, which begin on January 2 and include new seasons of Son of a Critch, Workin' Moms, Still Standing, Run the Burbs, Pretty Hard Cases, and The Nature of Things starting that week.
   
  Among the new Canadian series are Bollywed, a docuseries about a bridal shop in Toronto's Little India premiering Thursday, January 12; an English-language adaptation of Québecois series Plan B starts on Monday, February 27, while limited series Essex County debuts on Sunday, March 19.
   
  In terms of international series: the David Tennant-starring adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days airs Mondays starting January 2 (after previously airing on PBS and already being available on CBC Gem); season 4 of Catastophe will air on Tuesdays starting January 3 (but there is no indication of the first three seasons being available to stream on Gem again); and season 1 of Casual will air starting February 14.
   
  That, of course, is in addition to the new CBC News Explore free-streaming channel which launched this past week and has some original programming of its own.
   
• CTV has announced programming for the holiday season, including a special Christmas episode of Jann (which aired its last original episode more than a year ago) this Friday, December 9, baking competition Cross Country Cake Off starting December 15, and Gordon Ramsay's Road Trip: Christmas Vacation on December 17, among several other special episodes, movies, and more.
   
• The Showcase website is now indicating that the third season of Batman spinoff/prequel series Pennyworth is "coming this January", after having been previously announced to air in October alongside its U.S. debut that month on HBO Max.

Other notes

• Pluto TV launched in Canada this past week. Suffice it to say, if your interests happen to overlap with programming in the Paramount and Corus catalogues – including CSI, NCIS, the syndicated Judge Judy, early-2000s Nickelodeon programming, Property Brothers or Love It or List It – it might be worth checking out. The most notable channel we could spot outside of that was a channel airing classic (pre-Eccleston) episodes of Doctor Who in English – and another airing the modern seasons in French.

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.

Anonymous: Any idea when Damian Lewis drama A Spy Among Friends is coming to Canada and where it'll land? MGM+ (in the process of being renamed from Epix) just picked up U.S. rights.

WCIW: The series is distributed by Sony Pictures Television and was originally intended to be part of Charter Communications' "Spectrum Originals" lineup, which is being phased out. Bell Media had picked up a bunch of other Sony-produced Spectrum originals, like the Mad About You reboot and Panhandle, so it wouldn't surprise us if it ended up on one of their services.

Alternatively, it's possible that, as we suggested recently, the existing MGM add-on channel on Prime Video Canada could roll over to MGM+, in which case it would make sense for the service to also hold Canadian rights to this show.

Either way, though, there's nothing official we've seen about this show yet.

Sylvain: Any word if Netflix Canada is planning to re-release Knives Out ahead of the streaming release of Glass Onion on December 23?

WCIW: We wouldn’t count on it. Lionsgate still distributes the first movie but isn’t a financial participant in the sequel, so they have no incentive to provide Netflix with any special help. They may be happy to stream or rent/sell it elsewhere for now.

Recent updates on WCIW

While you've probably seen our December listings by now, we do want to point out that the month's listings for Paramount+ have been updated, having received fuller information on December 1.

We've also added a post about the availability of Showtime programming in Canada, to provide a canonical place for this information going forward.

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We'll see you again next week.