Watching This Week #98

Welcome to the February 6, 2023, 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 relatively light news week but we do have a few minor updates for Paramount+, CTV Comedy, and more – but first, here's what's new this coming week.

What's new this week – February 6–12

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 (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.

• Netflix: Outlander (season 6 – Monday); Vinland Saga (season 2 – Monday); Bill Russell: Legend (documentary – Wednesday); Dear David (teen drama film – Thursday); My Dad the Bounty Hunter (animated series – Thursday); You (season 4, part 1 – Thursday); Love is Blind: After the Altar (season 3 – Friday); Love to Hate You (Korean series – Friday); Your Place or Mine (rom-com film – Friday)
• Disney+: Kindred (FX miniseries – Wednesdays); Me & Mickey (season 1 – Wednesday); Miraculous (seasons 1–3 – Wednesday); various seasons of A+E Networks series (Wednesdays); Dug Days ("Carl's Date" – Friday); Marvel Studios: Legends (Quantumania tie-ins – Friday)
• Crave: C.B. Strike (new season adapting Troubled Blood – Mondays); All That Breathes (documentary – Tuesday); Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022 film – Friday); Leverage: Redemption (season 2 – Friday); Mr. A & Mr. M: The Story of A&M Records (docuseries – Friday); Pleasure (2021 drama film – Friday); The Swearing Jar (2022 Canadian film – Friday); Tooning Out the News (season 3 – Friday); Transplant (season 3 – Friday); Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark (HBO stand-up special – Saturday) [also note that this week's episode of The Last of Us may be released on Friday instead of Sunday, as with HBO Max]
• Prime Video: Farzi (Indian series – Friday); For One Night Only (Quebec stand-up specials – Friday); Montana Story (2022 film – Friday); Palava (Nigerian film – Friday); Somebody I Used to Know (rom-com film – Friday); Chupke Chupke (Pakistani series – Saturday)
• CBC Gem: Blind Ambition (Australian documentary – Monday); Grand Designs [UK] (season 20, part 1 – Monday); Mittens & Pants (kids series – Monday); Willie (documentary – Tuesday); Ghosts (UK season 4 – Friday); The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019 film – Friday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): A Crime on the Bayou (documentary – Tuesday); House of Lies (2012–16 Showtime series – Tuesday); Polyamory (2012–13 Showtime docuseries – Tuesday); At Midnight (rom-com film – Friday); Boys in Blue (Showtime docuseries – Friday); Orphan: First Kill (2022 horror film – Friday)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Make It at Market (reality series – Feb. 7)
• CTV: Super Bowl ⅬⅦ (Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET – also on Fox, TSN, DAZN, and TSN+); Next Level Chef (season 2 – premieres Sunday after the game; Thursdays thereafter)
• CTV2: Not Dead Yet (ABC comedy series starring Gina Rodriguez – Wednesdays, two-episode premiere)
• W Network (also on StackTV): The Love Club (film anthology series – Fridays)
• History (also on StackTV): History's Greatest of All Time with Peyton Manning (Mondays)
• Adult Swim (also on StackTV): Harley Quinn special ("A Very Problematic Valentine's Day Special" – Saturday*)
• Treehouse (also on StackTV): Rubble & Crew (PAW Patrol spin-off – Saturdays starting Feb. 4*)
• Animal Planet: Puppy Bowl ⅩⅨ (Sunday at 2:00 p.m. ET)
• Starz (also available as an add-on/channel on Crave, Prime Video, and Apple TV): Mack & Rita (2022 film – Friday)

Programming news

• Two announcements from Paramount+ this past week indicate how the service is handling some of its releases very differently between international markets. European docuseries Murder of God's Banker, about the death of fugitive financier Roberto Calvi, will premiere on February 24 in most of the service's markets, but not the U.S., the reasons for which have not been elaborated.
   
  On the other hand, American docuseries The Family Stallone – as in Sylvester et al. – will premiere on a date to be announced this spring in both the U.S. and Canada, and in other markets later in the year.
   
• In addition to returning to Crave this past week, CTV Comedy apparently recently started to re-air the first season of The Other Two on Wednesday nights, suggesting that it may air the second season as well in the coming weeks. The first few episodes are also available to stream on the CTV website and apps.

Other notes

• If you happen to share a Netflix account with others, be aware that the service is starting to roll out its previously-announced verification measures more widely, including in Canada. In short, if you sign in on a new device not on the same home network usually used with the account, you'll be asked to verify the device through a code emailed to the address on the account.
  
  When Netflix first announced a crackdown a password sharing, it tested a plan that would allow multiple households to share an account by paying additional fees. It does not seem this concept will be part of the Canadian rollout. [Update (Feb. 8): Looks like there will be such an option in Canada after all.]
   
• Crave, the pay TV component of which launched 40 years ago this past Wednesday as First Choice, reached 3.124 million subscribers across Canada as of the end of 2022. Of those, over one million are direct-to-consumer (as opposed to those who subscribe through a TV provider), according to BCE's year-end financial results.
   
• Speaking of pay TV channels that got rebranded/absorbed into streaming services, that's what will be happening with Showtime in the U.S., with Paramount Global telling staff that the legacy premium cable service will be renamed "Paramount+ with Showtime" at some point in the near future. It looks like Showtime will remain active as a programming brand (similar to the FX hub on Hulu), but other details are still to come about how the two services will be fully integrated. (Needless to say, this has no direct effect on Canada beyond what has already happened with Showtime content starting to migrate from Crave to Paramount+ at the end of last year.)
   
• It looks like Disney may be the latest big media player to look at reversing the trend of centralizing their content within their own services. Per Bloomberg, the company, now once again led by Bob Iger, is exploring expanding licensing of its films and TV series to other services, after doing the opposite in the leadup to the launch of Disney+. Perhaps the recent arrival of the 1990s Touchstone Television-produced series Blossom on CTV Throwback is an early part of that move.
   
  Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery has signed deals with Roku and Tubi to bring some of its library content, including recent HBO / HBO Max tax writeoffs cancellations such as Westworld and The Time Traveler's Wife, to those free ad-supported services, at least in the States. As regular readers might expect, there's no indication yet that these deals would cover Canada, with or without the content that remains available on Crave here.

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca) or social media. 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.

Jim: Will the Canadian streaming scene be affected by the pending Rogers/Shaw merger? Always hopeful that maybe some of the “missing” shows and seasons from the big streamers will sneak through.

WCIW: We don't expect the proposed merger of Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications, which has passed several regulatory hurdles in recent weeks but is still awaiting approval by the federal cabinet, to directly impact the current streaming landscape in Canada. We're not expecting the combined company to revive Shomi, for example, though the combined company might have more leverage to roll out its own streaming devices and push services that way.

What it may point to, however, is other changes does the line. The merger would not directly impact the Shaw family's controlling shares of Corus Entertainment, which they own separately from the namesake telecom company. But if they were willing to sell Shaw Communications, it's a good indication that, sooner or later, they may want to sell their controlling interest in Corus as well.

The tricky thing there is figuring out who would want to – or be able to – buy Corus in light of current media concentration and foreign ownership rules. It could even be broken up into pieces as WIC was about 25 years ago. Either way, any sort of change to Corus could catalyze changes to the programming rights the company currently holds, like Peacock originals – though it may be a bit early to say exactly how.

Sylvain: Any chances if Paramount+ Canada will have French subtitles of shows like the original Dexter, Ray Donovan and South Park? Currently on the Canadian version of the service, there are no programs with French audio.

WCIW: As of yet, there hasn't been much indication of Paramount looking to compete for Francophone customers in Canada, with the French-language versions of films like Smile and Top Gun: Maverick having recently appeared on Québecor's Club Illico on what appears to be the same pay-1 timeline as Paramount+, while Corus' Séries Plus recently picked up rights to the dubbed version of Yellowstone after that series moved to Paramount+ in English-speaking Canada.

Perhaps those moves are just temporary, but it also wouldn't surprise us if the versions françaises of the Showtime series mentioned ended up on Club Illico as well.

Recent updates on WCIW

We recently updated our post about The Other Two from fall 2021 to reflect the series having been re-added to Crave this past week.

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