Blue Lights, BritBox<\/p>\n
I never miss an opportunity to try to turn on readers to this Belfast-set drama that\u2019s more than just another police procedural thanks to its almost sociological approach to setting. In its exploration of the illegal drug trade\u2019s links to and effects on all sectors of that still divided city, the show \u2013 created by ex-journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson \u2013 often draws comparisons to HBO\u2019s The Wire.<\/p>\n
The third season, currently unfolding in Canada on BritBox a year after its BBC premiere, sees our crew of not-always-beloved \u201cpeelers\u201d working out of the fictional Blackthorn police station follow the money away from street-level dealers of the working-class areas to the well-to-do suburbs to the south.<\/p>\n
The plotting is denser, the set-pieces tauter. There\u2019s a particularly edge-of-your-seat sequence in the second episode that centres Dearbh\u00e1ile McKinney\u2019s Constable Aisling Byrne \u2013 who, first on the scene of a car crash, watches a young man die, then has to risk her own life to notify the parents of the deceased who live in a dissident Republican neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
Trying, Apple TV<\/p>\n
This sweet British comedy has outlived its original premise through the strength of lovable characters. After its central narrative about a London couple Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) trying to adopt a child reached a natural ending point, the show time-jumped six years between Seasons 3 and 4. The fifth season, which started on AppleTV on Wednesday, sees the pair struggling to incorporate their two teenagers\u2019 resurfaced and unreliable birth mother into the family. \u201cShe\u2019s trying, Nik,\u201d says Jason. \u201cIt\u2019s just maybe her trying doesn\u2019t look like our trying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trying is connected to Blue Lights by the actor Sian Brooke, who plays a compassionate social worker turned police officer Grace in the cop show, but here shows off her comic chops as Nikki\u2019s sister, a writer baffled by motherhood.<\/p>\n
Amandaland, CBC Gem<\/p>\n
The pretentious posh mum Amanda Hughes, played with a sublime sense of completely unfounded superiority by Lucy Punch, was a great supporting character on BBC\u2019s three-season comedy Motherland, but didn\u2019t necessarily seem deep enough to anchor for her own spinoff. <\/p>\n
Arguably, however, Amandaland is the funnier show. The premise sees Amanda, divorced and downwardly mobile, move to a less fashionable part of London and fall in with a new circle of parents. She imagines herself as an influencer with a lifestyle brand, but actually makes her living working in a kitchen store. The one-and-only Joanna Lumley (Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous) is a key component as Amanda\u2019s gin-guzzling mom. The second season joins the first on CBC Gem.<\/p>\n
IXE-13, Disney+<\/p>\n
Quebecor recently licensed this fun 2024 Illico+ miniseries to Disney+, making it available in Canada with English subtitles for the first time. <\/p>\n
Fans of Murdoch Mysteries and historical espionage thrillers should enjoy this eight-part drama inspired by the stories about an ace Canadian spy of that codename that Quebec writer Paul Daignault pumped out under the pen name Pierre Saurel from 1947 to 1966. <\/p>\n
Set in 1945, it sees agent IXE-13 a.k.a. Jean Thibault (C.R.A.Z.Y.\u2019s Marc-Andr\u00e9 Grondin) back in Montreal after the war trying to run a nightclub on the Main in Montreal in peace. But a plot by the Soviets to steal Canadian uranium and some loose-end Nazis running around Quebec end up pulling him and his associates (Anna Comes Home\u2019s Julie Le Breton is one) back into the fray. More pulp than prestige, the big-budget period piece is nevertheless respectful with its historical references \u2013 exploring for instance the psychological after-effects of the disastrous Dieppe raid that resulted in Canada\u2019s single worst day of military casualties in the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Less Than Kind, Pluto and Tubi<\/p>\n
This cult Canadian dramedy (2008 \u2013 2013) about a Jewish family in Winnipeg \u2013 which had one season on Citytv, then was picked up by (the now defunct) HBO Canada for three more \u2013 was in streaming limbo for a while. But I just discovered (belatedly) that all four seasons are available on the free-with-ads streamers Pluto and Tubi.<\/p>\n
Portly teen Sheldon Blecher (Jesse Camacho) comes of age in a household of oversized personalities: dad Sam (Maury Chaykin), a shady driving instructor; mom Anne (Wendel Meldrum), a nervous pyromaniac; and older brother (Benjamin Arthur), a vain actor resentful that he\u2019s had to move back home to Winnipeg. There\u2019s a great line in the pilot as Sam tries to sell his older son on the merits of his birthplace (and mine): \u201cWinnipeg has the best parking of any North American city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Created by Marvin Kaye (who drew inspiration from his own life) and Chris Sheasgreen, with Kids in the Hall\u2019s Mark McKinney acting as showrunner, this character-driven show was ahead of the curve in its hybrid tone and loose narratives that make it a more natural fit for streaming than weekly viewing. It survived the death of Chaykin for two final seasons on the strength of its originality. On one of his year-end top 10 lists, Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle called it \u201cStrange and lovely, anchored in the poetry of the ordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Lights, BritBox I never miss an opportunity to try to turn on readers to this Belfast-set drama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4278,49,48,75,2922,348],"class_list":["post-790778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-5towatch","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790778","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=790778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}