National Post (National Edition)
Fall on your cord
WHY CANADA NEEDS A SEARCH PARTY TO FIND SOME AMERICAN TELEVISION SHOWS
TBS’s new series Search Party is a remarkably clever and bitingly satirical look at the lives of a bunch of people who would qualify as entirely aimless if they weren’t so interested in themselves.
At least I think it is. That’s certainly what the first episode seems to be hinting at, while also taking the reasonably fresh step of marrying 20-somethingish ennui with a solidly propulsive hook — namely, the search for a missing woman. It looks as though the show’s central mystery will be a great excuse to both comment on the resolute self-involvement of its cast and give them something to actually do (in between Instagram posts of brunch, of course).
Much of what Search Party is remains a mystery in itself because, as a Canadian, all I can currently see is the lone episode on the TBS website that doesn’t require an American cable subscription to access. Thanks to the convoluted state of TBS in Canada, the show is not currently available here, and might not ever be, unless maybe Netflix retains its international rights, or one of the stations that occasionally rebroadcasts TBS shows gets around to putting it on the air a few months from now.
TBS is one of the particular curios of the Canadian cable/satellite system, a weird example of how peculiar our broadcasting rules can be. For many years, anyone who really liked the Atlanta Braves, or was just itching for yet another block of Simpsons or Fresh Prince reruns, could cheerfully tune into the Atlanta-based, Ted Turner-founded station — one of dozens of upper-dial denizens filling airwaves with literally anything, in the golden age of cable syndication.
Then, roughly coinciding with the station’s attempts to have something you may actually want to tune into, not just stumble across when you’re trying to avoid doing something worthwhile, TBS proper disappeared in Canada. Split into a “super channel” (TBS) and a local feed (known up here as Peachtree TV), the network only had approval to show the latter up here. Peachtree is nothing but a dumping ground of syndication (King of Queens! Seinfeld! Like 13 different fake-court shows!) that I’m willing to bet fewer than 75 people could even name without it being put in front of them. To access TBS’s slow build to doing more interesting things, Canadians have had to rely on the piecemeal pickup of different networks for Conan, The Pete Holmes Show and Angie Tribeca. Meanwhile, the more recent People of Earth and Search Party are nowhere to be found.
These shows will air eventually, although often months after their big American rollout/hype season, a promo piggyback that Canadian networks normally do their best to take advantage of. That Search Party was missed is almost as odd as TBS’s rollout: dumped entirely online last Sunday, and then aired twice a day for the week, before bowing out. Nonetheless, it earned a heap of hype when it debuted at Sundance, and its setting speaks directly to the young audience that the big companies have been courting so hard of late. (Hi, Viceland!)
Given that the younger generation doesn’t show a lot of compunction with finding shows that intrigue them, regardless of legality or venue, you’d think the opportunity to give it to them with ads attached would be even more imperative. Last year, the advertising pitch for Rick and Morty — another cross-border-delayed hit that plays well with the youths — was to finally watch the show your friend who downloads everything had been telling you about, so it’s not as though everyone at the cable networks is unaware of this potential problem.
In fairness, there are potentially dozens of reasons why a show doesn’t get a concurrent airing in Canada, and it could be anything from a particularly onerous licensing deal to them just straight-up not caring about a show that, whatever its quality, is still going to be fairly niche.
Still, it probably behooves everyone on all sides to figure this stuff out, wherever the shows are coming from: BBC’s Planet Earth 2, surely the most hyped nature documentary ever made, is currently airing in England, but won’t make it to American shores until the end of January, and still doesn’t have a confirmed air date in Canada yet. I’d be shocked if a healthy portion of 40-and-unders staring down the barrel of two weeks of Christmas family time didn’t find a way to watch it before it was even possible to give somebody in Canada money to do so. (Whatever people’s moral codes, “This is literally the only way I can watch this thing that I very much want to watch” is a remarkably compelling argument, at least anecdotally.)
It’s only going to become more important as the legal options for watching shows multiply, too. It’s been strongly rumoured that Amazon Prime is coming to Canada on Dec. 1 (and even if it’s not that soon, barring some more of that weird government intervention, it can’t be that far off). Some of its shows have been available to Canadians on Shomi, which is conveniently shutting down the day before the service is likely to be available here.
Still, with Amazon’s reach, hefty library and ability to bundle streaming videos with free shipping on all your Amazon orders, it’ll be a different kind of competitor for Canadian eyeballs, a sort of super-Netflix that can also feed off global hype to pique our attention to its shows (Man in the High Castle: out, conveniently, right around your Christmas break).
Airing shows concurrently is a rather small part of what Canadian networks will need to do to keep people tuning in, but therein lies part of the worry: If something that small hasn’t been sorted yet, it doesn’t give scads of hope for the future.
THE LEGAL OPTIONS FOR WATCHING SHOWS ARE CONTINUING TO MULTIPLY.