CFL\u2019s Mobil Thanksgiving Weekend, TSN<\/p>\n
Sure as shooting, every long-running American sitcom eventually produces a Thanksgiving episode \u2013 from ALF (\u201cTurkey in the Straw,\u201d a two-parter) to WKRP (\u201cTurkeys Away\u201d). Dramatic American Thanksgiving dinners, likewise, abound on screens big and small.<\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Saskatchewan will face Montreal on Monday in a rematch of last November\u2019s Grey Cup, which the Roughriders claimed in part thanks to running back A.J. Ouellette.John Woods\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n But it\u2019s 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 \u2013 but in an American-coded episode originally broadcast in November. The Schitt\u2019s 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 \u2013 but it saw the Critch family celebrating the American one in honour of a visiting relative.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s harvest festival is generally a more low-key, less commercialized affair \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Small Prophets, Apple TVOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Pearce Quigley, left, and Lauren Patel star in the magical melancholy comedy Small Prophets.Vishal Sharma\/Supplied<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 that is, homunculi. Soon, Michael is suspending his disbelief and dabbling in dark arts in his shed with a young slacker colleague \u2013 and attracting the attention of busybody neighbours. This show\u2019s charming mix of magical and mundane elements can be read as metaphor, or straightforward fantasy \u2013 but one thing\u2019s for sure: It is the best British comedy about an alchemist since Ben Jonson\u2019s days. New episodes land Tuesdays on Apple TV through Nov. 4.<\/p>\n Merrily We Roll Along, CraveOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 2023 Broadway production starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe was the opposite \u2013 a sold-out affair with an average ticket price that crept up above US$300.<\/p>\n I saved myself a stack of Franklins by waiting to watch Friedman\u2019s recording of the stage production, which became available this week in Canada on Crave. (Library users may also find it on Hoopla.)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s strange structure, comes together. The two stars both won Tony Awards, but Friedman won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Cupertino, CBS, Global, STACKTVOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 named after the Silicon Valley city.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 shows are at their best when both topical and a little weird; it takes until the end of the second episode \u2013 minor spoiler ahead \u2013 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. <\/p>\n Deaner \u201989, CBC Gem, CBC TVOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Deaner \u201989 features Mary Walsh in the origin story of Canada\u2019s favourite headbanger, Fubar\u2019s \u2018the Deaner\u2019.Alan Fraser\/Mongrel Media<\/p>\n This 2024 action-comedy-musical is an origin story for Dean Murdoch, the headbanger better known as \u201cthe Deaner\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Pick <\/a>for The Globe and Mail. \u201cIt 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,\u201d she wrote. \u201cDeaner \u201989 is a love letter to those catalytic moments.\u201d It airs on CBC TV and streams on Gem on Oct. 10. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CFL\u2019s Mobil Thanksgiving Weekend, TSN Sure as shooting, every long-running American sitcom eventually produces a Thanksgiving episode \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":925348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[4278,49,48,521,522,520,2922,82],"class_list":["post-925347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-5towatch","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-noastack","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925347","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=925347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}