CFL’s Mobil Thanksgiving Weekend, TSN
Sure as shooting, every long-running American sitcom eventually produces a Thanksgiving episode – from ALF (“Turkey in the Straw,” a two-parter) to WKRP (“Turkeys Away”). Dramatic American Thanksgiving dinners, likewise, abound on screens big and small.
Saskatchewan will face Montreal on Monday in a rematch of last November’s Grey Cup, which the Roughriders claimed in part thanks to running back A.J. Ouellette.John Woods/The Canadian Press
But it’s hard to think of a Canadian film or an episode of a Canadian show that centres on our own Thanksgiving traditions. The Paw Patrol pups saved Thanksgiving – but in an American-coded episode originally broadcast in November. The Schitt’s Creek instalment that sent David Rose (Dan Levy) on a turkey shoot was at best holiday-adjacent. Son of a Critch had a Thanksgiving episode – but it saw the Critch family celebrating the American one in honour of a visiting relative.
The closest to a Canadian Thanksgiving special we have may be the two-part 2007 episode of Degrassi: The New Generation where the combined stress of midterms and making a turkey dinner led a panic-attack plagued Paige to drop out of university. So not that close at all.
Canada’s harvest festival is generally a more low-key, less commercialized affair – without the ad blitz to sustain its own specials, but also unburdened by the same underlying toxic mythology. Enjoy instead the main homegrown TV event this weekend: a string of CFL games featuring every team except the Toronto Argos, culminating in a Monday afternoon (1 p.m. EDT) Grey Cup rematch between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Montreal Alouettes.
Small Prophets, Apple TVOpen this photo in gallery:
Pearce Quigley, left, and Lauren Patel star in the magical melancholy comedy Small Prophets.Vishal Sharma/Supplied
This BBC series created by Mackenzie Crook (The Detectorists) is one of those gently melancholy comedies that pervade the streaming era, but with a unique selling point the genre otherwise lacks: homunculi.
Seven years after the Christmas Eve disappearance of his girlfriend, Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) is drifting through a sad-sack life in a cul-de-sac, working at a DIY store and making regular visits to his father Brian (Michael Palin) who is also disappearing, more slowly, into dementia.
One day, Brian starts talking about the time he spent in Egypt on national service learning how to summon tiny humanoids who can foretell the future – that is, homunculi. Soon, Michael is suspending his disbelief and dabbling in dark arts in his shed with a young slacker colleague – and attracting the attention of busybody neighbours. This show’s charming mix of magical and mundane elements can be read as metaphor, or straightforward fantasy – but one thing’s for sure: It is the best British comedy about an alchemist since Ben Jonson’s days. New episodes land Tuesdays on Apple TV through Nov. 4.
Merrily We Roll Along, CraveOpen this photo in gallery:
The Tony-winning 2023 production of Merrily We Roll Along reaches the small screen, where viewers can catch (from left) Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez up close (if not in person).Crave/Supplied
This Stephen Sondheim musical about a group of creative friends told in reverse chronology was a famous flop when it premiered in 1981. Director Maria Friedman’s 2023 Broadway production starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe was the opposite – a sold-out affair with an average ticket price that crept up above US$300.
I saved myself a stack of Franklins by waiting to watch Friedman’s recording of the stage production, which became available this week in Canada on Crave. (Library users may also find it on Hoopla.)
Groff and Radcliffe are superb as a musical-theatre composer and lyricist, respectively, whose friendship and partnership slowly falls apart or, rather, given the show’s strange structure, comes together. The two stars both won Tony Awards, but Friedman won’t win any prizes for her filmmaking; the ways she captures her stage production in close up is confounding at times. Still, enough of the magic was captured.
Cupertino, CBS, Global, STACKTVOpen this photo in gallery:
Mike Coulter, left, and Rachel Keller play a pair of fired lawyers in Cupertino, the latest from TV power couple Robert King and Michelle King.Elizabeth Fisher/Supplied
The married American TV creators Robert and Michelle King are best known for their interconnected series The Good Wife, The Good Fight and Elsbeth. This week, they launch a brand-new law-show universe with Cupertino – named after the Silicon Valley city.
The pilot finds veteran lawyer Michael Price (Mike Coulter) and younger lawyer Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller) wrongfully dismissed from the same tech company. The two get a taste for fighting back against digital giants and set up shop to represent common folk ground up by the algorithms. The Kings’ shows are at their best when both topical and a little weird; it takes until the end of the second episode – minor spoiler ahead – for Cupertino to hit that sweet spot as a rogue AI attempts to hire the firm to sue its own creators. New episodes are Thursdays at 8 p.m. on Global and STACKTV.
Deaner ’89, CBC Gem, CBC TVOpen this photo in gallery:
Deaner ’89 features Mary Walsh in the origin story of Canada’s favourite headbanger, Fubar’s ‘the Deaner’.Alan Fraser/Mongrel Media
This 2024 action-comedy-musical is an origin story for Dean Murdoch, the headbanger better known as “the Deaner” from cult Canadian comedies Fubar, Fubar 2 and the short-lived TV series FUBAR Age of Computer. But it is, technically, not part of the Fubar franchise.
Actor Paul Spence got the rights to the character he plays and wrote this stand-alone film explaining how the Deaner first got into heavy-metal music along with his sister, Jen (Star Slade), after discovering their true heritage. Anne T. Donahue made it a Critic’s Pick for The Globe and Mail. “It is easy as adults to forget the clueless, teen babies we were the first time we discovered how music led to uncovering precious, new communities,” she wrote. “Deaner ’89 is a love letter to those catalytic moments.” It airs on CBC TV and streams on Gem on Oct. 10.