Illustration by Illustration by Alex MacAskill
Television viewing in 2026 is going to involve a lot of déjà vu.
In the United States, streaming services that once moved fast and broke things are now mostly embracing safe and familiar content in scary and uncertain times.
But in Canada, an opposite trend is afoot in the streaming world: original shows that aren’t simply elbows up, but in your face. ‘Can’t hurt to try’ seems to be the emerging ethos.
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Belated returnsOpen this photo in gallery:
Tom Hiddleston and Camila Morrone star in season two of The Night Manager, which returns a decade after the first season made it a sensation.des willie/Supplied
For the first time since the pandemic, the show that won the Emmy Award for Best Drama is back on screens with a new season in a timely manner. HBO’s The Pitt returns for its second season on Crave on Jan. 8 – a year minus a day after its first season premiered.
But the raw, real-time medical drama is still the exception that proves the rule in the streaming universe – where many multiyear gaps between seasons have become common.
A new record is surely being set by The Night Manager, a John Le Carré-inspired BBC spy thriller starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman that was a sensation back in 2016.
The British series returns for its second season Jan. 11 – on Prime Video in Canada. Much has changed in the world since the show first appeared: Le Carré has shuffled off his mortal coil; Hiddleston is finally free of his Loki obligations; and Colman has won both an Oscar and an Emmy.
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Revivals
Any TV show returning to screens after a time gap longer than nine years – with enough of the same cast and creative still involved – falls into this category; not quite a new season, but not exactly a reboot.
Sixteen years after it went off the air, Scrubs is set to return on Feb. 25 with back-to-back episodes on CTV (then on Crave). The Zach Braff-headed medical comedy ran for seven seasons on NBC – and then was resurrected for two more on ABC (where the revival will also air).
But then creator Bill Lawrence went off to make Ted Lasso and Shrinking for Apple TV+. He’s back for the Scrubs revival, as are Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke, complemented by a new set of young comic actors playing their medical interns this time around.
Other coming revivals with premiere dates not yet nailed down include Malcolm in the Middle (yes, even Bryan Cranston is returning to the family sitcom) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with OG slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar starring alongside child-of-Canadians Ryan Kiera Armstrong as a new Chosen One).
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Expanding universesOpen this photo in gallery:
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a prequel series from George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones universe, coming in January to Crave.Steffan Hill/Supplied
What used to be dismissed as mere TV “spinoffs” are of course now more grandly considered parts of ever expanding universes – and the Canadian screen industry certainly isn’t complaining.
Starfleet Academy, the latest Ontario-shot Star Trek series set in the 32nd century, will premiere Jan. 15 on Paramount+, while X-Men ’97, the critically acclaimed and mostly Canadian-voiced Marvel Studios animated series, is expected back for a second season in the summer on Disney+.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO’s new Game of Thrones-related prequel based on George R.R. Martin’s relatively cheery Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas about a knight and his squire, will premiere in these parts on Crave on Jan. 18.
While it was shot in Northern Ireland, the show’s creator is Canadian Ira Parker – who has written for House of the Dragon and, a decade ago, created the edgy-for-the-CBC magical comedy Four in the Morning.
Cancon that’s not cannedOpen this photo in gallery:
The Bon Cop, Bad Cop series inspired by the hit bilingual movie will be missing original co-star Colm Feore, but Patrick Huard, right, returns as David Bouchard while Henry Czerny joins the cast.Supplied
Maybe because Canada doesn’t have the same powerful IP as the United States, our screen creators seem to be taking risks on shows you haven’t actually seen before.
Sure, Crave has Bon Cop, Bad Cop coming in the spring – a series based on the hit bilingual buddy-cop movies, but sans Colm Feore, who’s busy with Landman. Global, likewise, is launching Private Eyes: West Coast with Jason Priestley and Cindy Sampson reprising their P.I. roles, but now transposed to B.C. (Both premiere dates TBA.)
But while Jared Keeso could surely have sold yet another Letterkenny spinoff after the success of Shoresy, the hoser auteur’s big new Crave comedy in 2026 is a stand-alone project about, of all things, animal wranglers in the film industry.
New Metric Media’s I Kill the Bear – premiere date TBA – has the typically eclectic cast expected from a Keeso project, including Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, MMA fighter George St-Pierre as well certified Canadian comedy veterans Jonathan Torrens and Scott Thompson.
Another outside-the-box show produced by New Metric is Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story, a comedy about a sprinter getting a positive drug test at the 1988 Olympic Games. The hotly anticipated new show from creator Anthony Q Farrell (Shelved) has been described as I, Tonya meets Eastbound & Down and is expected some time in the new year on Paramount+.