The Borgias, Prime Video
The Borgias stars Francois Arnaud and Jeremy Irons.Jonathan Hession/CBC GEM
The Canadian actor François Arnaud has been in some great films and TV series over the years, starting with Quebec director Xavier Dolan’s breakout 2009 film, J’ai tué ma mère (streaming on Crave, though not with English subtitles). But his role as Scott Hunter in Heated Rivalry has catapulted him to an entirely new and unnerving level of fame – with some of that hot hockey drama’s more rabid fans giving him a rough time on social media lately.
To help overheated followers remember Arnaud is an actor and not a part, I recommend revisiting his earlier roles – especially his three-season stint as Cesare Borgia, the son of a pope played by Jeremy Irons, on The Borgias. This was an up-and-down post-Sopranos historical drama – but Arnaud was consistently excellent in it. “Cesare is by far the most interesting, compelling character, a pragmatic young leader, self-aware, as cunning as he is wary of his father’s too-grand machinations,” The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle wrote in a review. “Arnaud tends to steal every scene, even with Irons attempting to eat the scenery in his lovely papal robes.”
Twice Colonized, CBC Gem
When her youngest son unexpectedly passes away, Aaju embarks on a personal journey to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice in Twice Colonized.Courtesy of Eye Steel Film / Red Marrow Media
Before creating the Nunavut-set comedy North of North, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Stacey Aglok Macdonald produced this documentary portrait of the Greenland-born Inuk lawyer and activist Aaju Peter. Directed by Danish filmmaker Lin Alluna, the 2023 film – which first appeared on CBC as part of the Passionate Eye documentary series that year, and still streams on Gem – follows Peter as she treks from her current home in Iqaluit to Copenhagen on a political quest to establish a permanent Indigenous forum at the European Union. She also visits the communities where she grew up in Greenland on a personal journey of healing with her brother.
“Our history has been written by outsiders and visitors,” says Peter, an Order of Canada recipient for her commitment to preserving Inuit culture and language. “I want to write our own histories.”
Twice Colonized’s team overcame its own challenges created by colonialism to make this the first pan-Arctic co-production between Inuit across borders. It’s reflective, mournful, inspiring.
Redemption Run, CBC Gem
Redemption Run provides a behind-the-scenes look at Canada’s national bobsleigh program as it attempts to regain its Olympic mojo.Viesturs Lacis/CBC GEM
This three-part docuseries from Tyson Media provides a behind-the-scenes look at Canada’s national bobsleigh program as it attempts to regain its Olympic mojo after a decade-long slide down the international standings.
Hopefully, the pilots, pushers and brakemen have got their act together since filming wrapped at the 2025 World Championships in March. What’s seen on camera is a mostly unhappy group of individuals, who discovered bobsleigh after their shot put or track or football careers faded, going into debt to pursue an Olympic dream in an expensive, deeply inequitable program.
I had bobsleigh pegged as a fun sport, but it’s apparently full of unlikeable personalities, unnecessary interpersonal drama and ghastly accidents – the worst here being a preventable one in a training facility. I don’t know if the documentarians expected to produce a portrait of a team that needs therapy more than coaching to get back on track, but it’s fascinating viewing. All three episodes on Gem as of Jan. 23 (and airing on CBC TV on Feb. 1).
The Winter’s Tale, Stratfest@Home
Yanna McIntosh as Paulina (centre) with David Collins as Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale.David Hou/Supplied
This summer, I came out of director Antoni Cimolino’s production of The Winter’s Tale – now on the Stratford Festival’s streaming service – wondering if this late romance of Shakespeare’s, so contemporary in its shifts in tone and structure, might actually be my favourite of his plays.
In Cimolino’s staging of the dark-then-light fairy tale about a ruler named Leontes (Graham Abbey) who goes into a frenzy of attempted femicide after a sudden fit of jealousy, I was particularly struck by the scenes in which Leontes’s son Mamillius listens to his father going down a pre-Internet wormhole of his misinformed mind.
Maybe it’s having two young boys, but I felt like this was what viewers who were left stunned by Adolescence should watch next. The whole cast is incredible – and I wept throughout the final scene. Spoiler alert: I felt as if I were the statue – reawakened after 16-odd years of being a theatre critic to rediscover that I could simply love Shakespeare again as civilian.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, Prime Video
Kristen Wiig as Vera in Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie.DreamWorks Animation/Supplied
If you’re not familiar with the Netflix series this movie is based on, it’s a live-action/animated hybrid that seems to have been inspired by children-who-are-allowed-to-watch-YouTube’s fascination with unboxing videos. Gabby (played by human Laila Lockhart Kraner) gets a package each episode, opens it, and whatever’s inside sparks an adventure in her dollhouse full of strange cartoon cats.
The big-screen spinoff is, surprisingly, quite charming, borrowing themes from the Toy Story franchise to explore the fear of growing up and that you may lose your ability to play and imagine along the way.
Kristen Wiig’s villain is the best part – and the fact that Lockhart Kraner is getting a little big to play Gabby is built into the script. My judgment may be clouded: This was my younger son’s first movie in a cinema – and he sat rapt though the entire running time, only yelling out once: “Baby Box!” It’s now having its Canadian subscription streaming premiere on, go figure, Amazon’s Prime Video Jan. 24.