TV – Winnipeg Free Press

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Spencer Pazer / Netflix
Dan Levy returns to comedy in Big Mistakes.

Narco nannies, sharks and other TV dangers

Denise Duguay 4 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

Anticipation has value, but it requires familiarity. Those viewers in that camp are already counting the days to the likes of the next Margaret Atwood-inspired feminist dystopia, The Testaments, which premières the first three of eight episodes on April 8, on Disney+. Fans of the Vermont-born singer-songwriter are already primed for the documentary-concert combo Noah Kahan: Out of Body, premièring on Netflix on April 13.

But this list of viewing suggestions is more targeted to the series and movies that are less well telegraphed, or more easily overlooked (hidden?) in the streaming-app menus. And so, behold five series and movies you might be less likely to already know about, but should give a try.

●Dear Killer Nannies (series premières with all eight episodes Wednesday, April 1, on Disney+)

Child care is an important consideration for every family. Despite being a violent Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar is no exception. His son Juan Pablo Escobar’s memoir is the basis for this new series, which centres the story of young Juampi, the hitman caregivers assigned by papa Pablo (John Leguizamo) and Juampi’s struggle over whether — and how — to accept or reject the family legacy.

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Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images files
Director BenDavid Grabinski frequented
the Handsome Daughter while in Winnipeg.

Film director calls Winnipeg a ‘chill’ place to shoot

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

Film director calls Winnipeg a ‘chill’ place to shoot

Randall King 5 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

The action-comedy Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (now streaming on Disney+) stars Vince Vaughn as Nick, a gangster who employs time travel to right a personal wrong.

So it’s only fair to ask the film’s director, BenDavid Grabinski, to step back into 2024, when he worked on the film in Winnipeg from May to October.

Winnipeg wasn’t a particular culture shock for Grabinski, by the way. Though he is based in Los Angeles, he was born in Nebraska and spent his formative years, ages 16 to 23, in Iowa, so he was familiar with a Prairie landscape.

“I gotta tell you, I had a really good time in Winnipeg,” says Grabinski, 43, during a Zoom interview Thursday. “I shot 42 nights in a row, so I didn’t get to have that much of a life.

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2:00 AM CDT

Merit photo
Jeff Newman (left) is the director of Athens: Birth of Democracy, co-produced by Winnipeg’s Merit Motion Pictures for CBC’s Nature of Things.

Tracing the roots of democracy to today’s fragmentation

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Preview

Tracing the roots of democracy to today’s fragmentation

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Thursday, Mar. 26, 2026

People sometimes joke that we would be no worse off if we picked someone at random from the phone book to rule the country.

Well, the ancient Greeks tried something just like that with their “kleroterion,” a slab of stone and primitive machine used by the Athenians to choose citizens for public office.

Near the end of Athens: Birth of Democracy, co-produced by Winnipeg’s Merit Motion Pictures for CBC’s Nature of Things, host Anthony Morgan and a group of students give this contraption a whirl under the blazing Athenian sun.

Students applaud as they’re randomly chosen by the machine’s system of dice. In reality, Athenians often grumbled at this rude imposition of civic duty.

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Thursday, Mar. 26, 2026

Apple TV
From left: Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara play best friends in Imperfect Women, premièring Wednesday.

You just can’t keep a good plotline down

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

You just can’t keep a good plotline down

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2026

Esteemed Irish playwright Samuel Beckett could likely have written some excellent absurdist sitcoms if he had been born a little later (though no quibbles with his stellar oeuvre, including Waiting for Godot, which will be onstage at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre next spring). But especially on point for this edition of viewing recommendations, consider his most famous quote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” This is the dogged spirit that propels the characters in these streaming options beyond death, war and career failure. Enjoy.

● Imperfect Women (series premières with the first two of eight episodes Wednesday, March 18, on Apple TV)

If indeed “friendships are built on secrets,” as the trailer for this mystery intones, some hard stares will be on the menu at the next brunch. Onscreen here, Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Kerry Washington (Scandal) star and produce, joined by a solid supporting cast including Kate Mara (The Astronaut), Joel Kinnaman (The Killing), Corey Stoll (House of Cards) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton). The basic story — a crime shatters lives and assumptions in the decades-long friendship of three women — sounds very similar to that of the newish How to Get to Heaven From Belfast (Netflix). The latter is darkly hilarious, with some good twisty developments, whereas the new series sounds a little worryingly slick.

● Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (movie sequel to the series premières Friday, March 20, on Netflix)

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Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2026

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Gislina Patterson (left) and Dasha Plett portray clueless late-night talk show hosts on Men Explain Things To Us… And We Like It!

Public-access talk show parody offers comedic look at masculinity

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Preview

Public-access talk show parody offers comedic look at masculinity

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026

There’s not much glitz or glamour in the world of public access television, and that’s part of what makes the medium enticing to Winnipeg artist Gislina Patterson, who’s spent hundreds of hours watching YouTube clips of low-budget, off-the-wall programming that wasn’t beholden to Nielsen ratings or network interference.

“What’s really exciting about those shows is that they’re this really pure, free form of expression,” says Patterson, who with Dasha Plett runs We Quit Theatre, a collaborative performance collective that wilfully and skilfully defies expectation.

“It’s people making something that they really like, that they really, really want to make. They have professional equipment, but there’s no expectation of what the material they create will be. And there are really beautiful things that emerge out of that.”

Plett and Patterson’s latest beautiful thing is Men Explain Things to Us … And We Like It!, a project that is exactly as it sounds, but so much more.

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Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026

Jordan Strauss / Invision Files
Catherine O’Hara was beloved by seemingly everyone.

Catherine O’Hara flipped tropes, brought humanity to every role

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Preview

Catherine O’Hara flipped tropes, brought humanity to every role

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026

Like many kids growing up in the ’90s, I first encountered Catherine O’Hara as Kevin’s mom in Home Alone.

Back then, she was just that: Kevin’s (Macaulay Culkin) mom. But watching the 1990 holiday classic as an adult, as I do every single Christmas with a lovely cheese pizza just for me, you realize the brilliance she brought to the character of Kate McCallister.

Only O’Hara could elevate one line into a movie-trailer tentpole catchphrase — “Kevin!” — by delivering it in a wide-eyed, two-syllable shriek.

Her comedic genius is everywhere, from her interactions on the phone with the Chicago police — “Yeah, hi, look…” — to her banter with real-life friend John Candy, as the Polka King of the Midwest.

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Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026

Bell Media
Connor Storrie (left) and Hudson Williams have become stars thanks to the series.

Heated Rivalry scores on so many levels

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Heated Rivalry scores on so many levels

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026

Heated Rivalry’s current cultural moment looks improbable on paper: how did a little six-episode Canadian show with no stars, from a Canadian director, based on a Canadian gay hockey romance series, released on a Canadian streaming platform set the world on fire?

Jacob Tierney’s (Letterkenny) sports romance, based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels, about the long-simmering — and secret — love between on-ice hockey rivals Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Conner Storrie, who is Patrick Swayze incarnate) more than lives up to the hype.

It does so much so well: the white-hot chemistry between two charismatic leads, the storytelling (you will weep), the cinematography, the tension, the payoff.

But lots of shows are excellent and even era-defining. What is it about this show that has led to a frenzied fandom that rivals Swifties in obsession and intensity, specifically among women? Some of my friends are on their third rewatch of the first season (it’s been picked up by HBO, of course) which was released in November and ended late last month.

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Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026

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Helen Williams / BritBox
From left: Joanna Scanlan, Tamsin Greig, Rosalie Craig and Amelia Bullmore start a punk band in the British series Riot Women.

Hey ho, let’s go watch punks, cops and spies

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Hey ho, let’s go watch punks, cops and spies

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026

Punk rock, kooky spies, crooked cops, a hilarious old man and a contract killer with a big, big problem: that should be enough to tide viewers over for a couple of weeks!

● Riot Women (series premières Wednesday on BritBox)

Happy Valley writer-director Sally Wainwright has a new series, which is reason enough to celebrate. That this one is about the forming of a punk band by a handful of menopausal women makes it even more appealing to those revelling in CBC’s brilliant menopause comedy Small Achievable Goals. Sisters are doing it! The performances are bound to also be good, from the likes of Joanna Scanlan (Slow Horses), Tamsin Greig (Friday Night Dinner), Lorraine Ashbourne (Sherwood), Taj Atwal (Line of Duty) and Rosalie Craig (Moonflower Murders). Hey ho, let’s go!

● Ponies (series premières Thursday on StackTV and Showcase)

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Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026

Bell Media
Noah Wyle (centre, back) stars as Dr. Michael (Robby) Robinavitch in The Pitt.

Anticipation TV: In celebration of waiting together for the next episode

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Anticipation TV: In celebration of waiting together for the next episode

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026

Remember “Must-See TV”?

For decades, this was how the Thursday-night lineup on NBC was marketed as that was when all the network’s most popular sitcoms aired. Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, Mad About You, Cheers and Wings were part of the original ’90s Must-See TV lineup, a tradition that was carried on through the 2000s-10s with shows such as Parks & Recreation, The Office, Community and 30 Rock. The two-hour comedy block was followed by a prestige drama at 9 p.m., before the news.

At the risk of sounding like a Things Were Better Back When scold, this really was a golden age for viewers. It was a scheduled time to catch up on your stories, but it also functioned as a community builder. All the new episodes from the night before were discussed and debated and quoted around watercoolers at the office or desks in the classroom on Friday morning, and if you missed them or had them waiting on a VHS tape or something, well, sucked to be you. This was Appointment Television. Best be on time.

The Pitt, the hit HBO Max medical drama which began its second season on Thursday night, feels like a welcome return to Appointment Television. For one, it shares a lot of DNA with ER, the other John Wells-produced medical drama which, for 15 seasons, dominated Must-See TV’s drama slot. We can literally once again watch Noah Wyle play a doctor on Thursdays at 9 p.m.

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Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026

Supplied
Meredith MacNeill (right) and Jennifer Whalen explore the realities of later life.

Series continues to mine later-life feminine reality for laughs, insight

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Preview

Series continues to mine later-life feminine reality for laughs, insight

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026

The Judy Blumes of menopause are back.

Small Achievable Goals, the workplace comedy about menopause from creators, executive producers, writers and stars Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeill (Baroness Von Sketch Show), returns to CBC tonight for a second season of boundary-pushing TV.

“It’s kind of like we’re always in labour,” Whalen jokes.

Season 1, which premièred last winter, put Whalen and MacNeill firmly in the menopause cultural zeitgeist. Here, finally, was a frank and funny coming-of-middle-age comedy, with relatable characters played by women roughly the same age — Whalen is 55, MacNeill is 50 — who weren’t making hackneyed open-freezer hot-flash jokes or wallpapering over reality with euphemisms.

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Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026

APTN
Jesse Bochner’s Animal Nation is a Canada-centric take on the nature-documentary genre and its exciting, poignant dramas.

Pointing a truer lens on nature

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

Pointing a truer lens on nature

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Friday, Jan. 2, 2026

At first glance, Winnipeg-born producer Jesse Bochner’s seven-part series Animal Nation brings to mind docu-series such as Wild America, Planet Earth and Nature.

Much of its trailer is a slow-mo montage of caribou and bison galloping majestically through Prairie and Arctic landscapes. Interspersed are shots of northern predators such as wolves and bears, suggesting a Canada-centric take on the genre and its exciting, poignant nature dramas.

Then there are the figures glaringly absent from many other northern wildlife series: the rural and Indigenous people who live closest to these creatures, as they have traditionally for millennia.

“I’ve always loved nature documentaries, so getting to make a nature documentary about animals and all the beauty and wonderful stuff that you come to expect from a blue-chip type of documentary is in there,” says Bochner, who is Ojibwa.

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Friday, Jan. 2, 2026

Netflix
Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson star in the new thriller His & Hers.

Laughing — and screening — all the way to 2026

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Laughing — and screening — all the way to 2026

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025

There is abundant comedy available to ease into the formal new year and abundant new and returning television in the month to follow to keep your various screens crackling. Press Play now.

● Ricky Gervais: Mortality (comedy special premières Tuesday, Dec. 30, on Netflix)

The British comic Ricky Gervais offers more of his usual bitter, bitter candy, but that might be just the palate cleanser required after too much holiday sugar. It’s one of a veritable avalanche of new comedy specials, some available now (Kumail Nanjiani’s adorably bewildered Night Thoughts on Disney+; Robby Hoffman’s ferociously indignant debut special, Wake Up, on Netflix; Tom Segura’s gleefully disgusting Teacher, also on Netflix); and coming up (SNL’s Marcello Hernández’s American Boy, recorded in front of a hometown Miami crowd, on Netflix on Wednesday, Jan. 7).

● Best Medicine (series gets a “special advance” première on Sunday, Jan. 4, on Fox and on Wednesday, Jan. 7, on CTV)

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Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025

Disney+
Denise Gough as Dedra Meero in Andor

We like to watch

Eva Wasney, Conrad Sweatman, Benjamin Waldman, Ben Sigurdson, Jen Zoratti and AV Kitching 10 minute read Preview

We like to watch

Eva Wasney, Conrad Sweatman, Benjamin Waldman, Ben Sigurdson, Jen Zoratti and AV Kitching 10 minute read Monday, Dec. 29, 2025

Whether you like mind-bending sci-fi, high-stakes medical drama, thoughtful animation or deeply horny hockey romance, television in 2025 had something for all tastes. The Free Press arts team weighs in with their favourites from a variety of streaming services.

Pluribus, Season 1

Nine-episode first season premièred Nov. 7 on Apple TV+ (new episode weekly)

Carol, we simply cannot wait to find out what happens to you next.

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Monday, Dec. 29, 2025

Kimberley French / Netflix
Helen Mirren (left) and Kate Winslet star in the tearjerker Goodbye June.

Escapist viewing for a stressful time of year

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Escapist viewing for a stressful time of year

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

In the middle of the best-of-the year roundup season, here is a list of simple escapist viewing, (mostly) minus deep thinking. Consider these five suggestions as either (both?) reward or procrastinatory enabler for all the hard work of preparing for and enduring whatever holiday season you celebrate.

● My Next Guest Needs No Introduction (new Season 6 episodes première starting today, Tuesday, Dec. 16, on Netflix)

Anyone missing the former network talk-show titan gets a stocking full of new one-on-ones. Debuting earlier this month, David Letterman’s interview with Adam Sandler is only slightly in support of the latter’s new film, Jay Kelly, with George Clooney (also on Netflix, after a theatrical run). Mostly, it is a charming look at the sometimes fratboy scat-mouthed comic and serious actor, here rendered cowed fanboy, alternating between trying to amuse his hero and marvelling, like any fan would, at being in the same space as the bearded curmudgeon. Next up are three new episodes in which Letterman banters and gets occasionally serious with Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Jason Bateman (Black Rabbit) and the influencer philanthropist MrBeast.

● Save Me/Save Me Too (series premières Thursday, Dec. 18, on BritBox)

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Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

SUPPLIED
Jessica Baker, the woman at the centre of the Jacob Hoggard case, reveals her identity for the first time.

Faceless, nameless no more

Jen Zoratti 7 minute read Preview

Faceless, nameless no more

Jen Zoratti 7 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

For a long time, she was nameless, known only as “the Ottawa woman.” In courtroom sketches, she was faceless, a vacant mask framed by blond hair.

But now, Jessica Baker, the woman who was violently raped by former Hedley frontman and Canadian Idol contestant Jacob Hoggard in 2016, is sharing — and reclaiming — her identity in Breaking Idol, a powerful new CBC documentary from Emmy-nominated writer and director Tiffany Hsiung.

Produced by Winnipeg’s Frantic Films, Breaking Idol, which premièred on The Passionate Eye last month, takes a survivor-centred approach to the story of one of Canada’s most high-profile sexual assault cases. In June 2022, Hoggard was found guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm against Baker and sentenced to five years in prison. Last year, his appeal was dismissed.

Hsiung, who is based in Toronto, suspects she was invited by CBC and Frantic Films to direct this project on the strength of her 2016 documentary The Apology, which follows the stories of three surviving “comfort women” who were among 200,000 others kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War. The Apology won a Peabody Award in 2019.

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Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025

Michelle Faye/Netflix
From left: Michael Greyeyes, Gillian Anderson and Michiel Huisman star in The Abandons.

Mom gone wild, mutt in denial among TV escapes

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Preview

Mom gone wild, mutt in denial among TV escapes

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025

While you probably don’t need much help finding your own seasonal programming, please accept an early gift in the shape of a Michelle Pfeiffer holiday movie. Then, as a non-festive chaser of alternatives, consider the following — music doc, period western, dog tale and a biography of a classic TV icon. Merry viewing!

● Oh. What. Fun. (movie premières Wednesday, Dec. 3, on Prime Video)

Some will find this holiday family movie relatable — painfully, regretably relatable and others will be cheering, possibly drunkenly, and considering their own domestic job action. Claire (hello, Michelle Pfeiffer, but what’s the deal with the accent?) has been taken for granted once too often by her husband (Denis Leary) and family (including Jason Schwartzman). Her escape takes her to the stage of the annual holiday mom contest, hosted by Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria). The simplest drinking game here — knock one back every time either Zazzy or Claire takes a drink — could be medically unwise..

● The Abandons (series premières with all 10 episodes Thursday, Dec. 4, on Netflix)

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Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025

March 31, 2026

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