Blue Lights, BritBox
I never miss an opportunity to try to turn on readers to this Belfast-set drama that’s more than just another police procedural thanks to its almost sociological approach to setting. In its exploration of the illegal drug trade’s links to and effects on all sectors of that still divided city, the show – created by ex-journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson – often draws comparisons to HBO’s The Wire.
The third season, currently unfolding in Canada on BritBox a year after its BBC premiere, sees our crew of not-always-beloved “peelers” 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.
The plotting is denser, the set-pieces tauter. There’s a particularly edge-of-your-seat sequence in the second episode that centres Dearbháile McKinney’s Constable Aisling Byrne – 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.
Trying, Apple TV
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’ resurfaced and unreliable birth mother into the family. “She’s trying, Nik,” says Jason. “It’s just maybe her trying doesn’t look like our trying.”
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’s sister, a writer baffled by motherhood.
Amandaland, CBC Gem
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’s three-season comedy Motherland, but didn’t necessarily seem deep enough to anchor for her own spinoff.
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’s gin-guzzling mom. The second season joins the first on CBC Gem.
IXE-13, Disney+
Quebecor recently licensed this fun 2024 Illico+ miniseries to Disney+, making it available in Canada with English subtitles for the first time.
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.
Set in 1945, it sees agent IXE-13 a.k.a. Jean Thibault (C.R.A.Z.Y.’s Marc-André 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’s 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 – exploring for instance the psychological after-effects of the disastrous Dieppe raid that resulted in Canada’s single worst day of military casualties in the Second World War.
Less Than Kind, Pluto and Tubi
This cult Canadian dramedy (2008 – 2013) about a Jewish family in Winnipeg – which had one season on Citytv, then was picked up by (the now defunct) HBO Canada for three more – 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.
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’s had to move back home to Winnipeg. There’s a great line in the pilot as Sam tries to sell his older son on the merits of his birthplace (and mine): “Winnipeg has the best parking of any North American city.”
Created by Marvin Kaye (who drew inspiration from his own life) and Chris Sheasgreen, with Kids in the Hall’s 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 “Strange and lovely, anchored in the poetry of the ordinary.”