{"id":311690,"date":"2025-11-28T05:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/311690\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T05:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T05:14:09","slug":"what-to-watch-this-weekend-the-beatles-in-their-own-words-and-paw-patrol-saves-christmas-again-plus-a-wong-kar-wai-series-debuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/311690\/","title":{"rendered":"What to watch this weekend: The Beatles in their own words and Paw Patrol saves Christmas (again), plus a Wong Kar-wai series debuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blossoms Shanghai, the Criterion ChannelOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The soapy Blossoms Shanghai, based on a novel by Jin Yucheng, is set in the early 1990s after the opening of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.junsoo\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Though it mostly curates film content, the Criterion Channel also streams auteur-ish television shows and miniseries \u2013 from Bergman\u2019s Fanny and Alexander to Fassbinder\u2019s Berlin Alexanderplatz. Now, it\u2019s adding thrice-weekly episodes of Blossoms Shanghai, the first TV series directed by Hong Kong cinema giant Wong Kar-wai \u2013 and a hit in China two years ago.<\/p>\n

Based on a novel by Jin Yucheng, the soapy show is set in the early 1990s after the opening of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, amid what an on-screen title calls the \u201cgreatest explosion of wealth in human history.\u201d It begins with the attempted murder of businessman Ah Bao (Hu Ge) \u2013 a crime that introduces all the colourful Shanghai speculators, government trade officials and glamorous Huanghe Road restaurateurs in his circle as people who potentially want him dead. The period production is relentlessly gorgeous, though the plotting is a little less compellingly crafted (based on a small sample of 30 episodes). <\/p>\n

The theme song sounds very much like Succession\u2019s \u2013 but if you think the series also owes a debt to Mad Men, you may have your influences reversed; Matthew Weiner is a major Wong fan, who drew from In the Mood for Love for his own well-tailored look back at the 1960s.<\/p>\n

The Beatles Anthology, Disney+Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A remastered version of the Beatles Anthology includes an hour of why George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr chose to reclaim their narrative in their fifties.Apple Corps, Ltd.\/Disney<\/p>\n

In the early nineties, old acrimonies having faded away, the surviving members of the Beatles got back into collaborating with a multimedia project that told the band\u2019s story in their own words. The initial airing of The Beatles Anthology on ABC in 1995 was a proper television event \u2013 recentering the Fab Four as an active force in pop culture. John Lennon\u2019s personal perspective was as present in the oral history that unfolded as those of George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Controversially, Lennon was also front and centre on new tracks the band released drawing on old recordings.<\/p>\n

A new remastered version of The Beatles Anthology, now on Disney+, culminates in an extra hour where we watch McCartney, Starr and Harrison putting the project together in their fifties \u2013 and explaining why they reclaimed their narrative at that point. \u201cWe\u2019ve heard it from everybody else, now you can hear it from us,\u201d says Starr.<\/p>\n

A Paw Patrol Christmas, everywhereOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Fan favourite Rubble comes to the rescue in a Paw Patrol special full of songs.Spin Master Entertainment\/Nickelodeon<\/p>\n

This latest 44-minute spin-off from the popular Spin Master series has had a theatrical release and been on Netflix for a while \u2013 but, this weekend, it will reach young children\u2019s eyeballs by all means possible. In Canada, you\u2019ll find it as of Friday on the free public streamers TVOKids and CBC Gem but also on subscription streamers Crave and Paramount+; on Dec. 1, it will expand further to Knowledge Network \u2013 and T\u00e9l\u00e9-Qu\u00e9bec as La Pat\u2019Patrouille: La mission de No\u00ebl.<\/p>\n

The special is full of songs and centres on fan favourite Rubble springing to the rescue after Santa gets a cold and can\u2019t deliver presents (and Mayor Humdinger goes Grinch and tries to steal them). I\u2019ve caught glimpses out of the corner of my eye as my enthralled two year old has watched it twice already. My six year old, however, is done with the doggy franchise and pooh-poohs: \u201cI don\u2019t like Christmas specials because they\u2019re all about saving Christmas. It\u2019s always the same thing, same thing, same thing.\u201d (He\u2019s not wrong \u2013 this is the fourth time, by my count, the pups have saved the holiday.)<\/p>\n

The Quiet Girl, CBC GemOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Quiet Girl follows C\u00e1it (Catherine Clinch), who is sent away to live with extended family and finds unconditional love there.CBC GEM<\/p>\n

This coming-of-age drama, written and directed by Colm Bair\u00e9ad, was the first Irish film to be nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards \u2013 for which it was eligible because it\u2019s mostly in the Irish language, with only a bit of English. Set in the summer of 1981, the film follows a neglected nine year old named C\u00e1it (Catherine Clinch) from a poor rural family, who is sent away to live with extended family in County Waterford after her mother gets pregnant again. There, she finds warmth and unconditional love for the first time. <\/p>\n

In a Critic\u2019s Pick review<\/a> for The Globe and Mail, Anne T. Donahue praised the movie for being so steeped in its child protagonist\u2019s point of view: \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful thing to watch a child realize they\u2019re worth something, and equally heartbreaking to reconcile that, until a specific point, they thought the opposite.\u201d On Gem from Nov. 28.<\/p>\n

The Traitors Ireland, Crave<\/p>\n

Ireland can make trashy TV, too \u2013 though nearly every country in the world has its version of this hit reality competition format, which originated in the Netherlands. The first season of The Traitors Ireland \u2013 which lands on Crave Nov. 29 \u2013 is hosted by the actress Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney, who you may know from her role as Sister Michael on Derry Girls. She\u2019s the loopy lady of a castle in Slane where a few of 24 contestants are secretly picked to be traitors and try to eliminate all the \u201cfaithful\u201d at night before they are discovered. <\/p>\n

I tend to prefer the versions of the show, such as this one in Ireland, that still have regular folks competing, rather than established reality TV personalities and \u201ccelebrities.\u201d Don\u2019t Google it to learn more, though \u2013 it\u2019s already aired and spoilers abound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blossoms Shanghai, the Criterion ChannelOpen this photo in gallery: The soapy Blossoms Shanghai, based on a novel by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4278,49,48,75,2922,208,348],"class_list":["post-311690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-5towatch","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack","tag-review","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}