What to watch this weekend: The Madness has Colman Domingo on the run on Netflix, The Fifth Estate fetes five decades on CBC Gem | Canada Voices

The Madness, Netflix

Black TV pundit and jiu-jitsu master Muncie Daniels (recent Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) is taking a break from the news cycle to write a novel in a remote cabin when the power goes out – which he realizes, in a wry meta-moment, as the Netflix wheel starts spinning on his laptop. Seeking help from his only neighbour, Muncie comes across a grisly scene; he’s soon on the run from masked men, under investigation by the police and the FBI, and hunted by white supremacists who haunt a conspiracy theory-filled message board. Created by playwright Stephen Belber, The Madness is seeped with cyberparanoia and seems written by and for the very online. It has a number of mad moments, in the first episode alone, where you might find yourself yelling at your Netflix screen: Why are you back there alone, Muncie? Or: Did G-Shock pay for this gory product placement?

Hard North, Prime Video

If you enjoy watching folks freeze fingers while making their own timber with hatchets, this reality-style docuseries is for you. It follows five people building shelters in four northern Canadian locations as winter is coming: Emilie and Gilbert in Peawanuck, Ont.; Margot in Plata, Yukon; Billy in Sainte-Françoise, Que.; and Matty in Lake St. John, N.L. Gilbert, who is Cree, makes the least show out of what he and his wife are doing. Matty, on the other hand, is a survivalist showman selling a lifestyle of hard work and solitude in the snowy wilderness; he calls the wood shed he’s fixing “his vault” and his outhouse “his throne.” “Out here, I’m a rich man,” he says, extolling a simple life with only his dog as companion. He does not mention the television camera crew filming him – or his YouTube channel for that matter. Premieres Nov. 29.

Spent, CBC Gem

This fiercely funny BBC Two series sees English actress and comedian Michelle de Swarte play Mia, a model in her late 30s whose runway career is over but runaway spending has not ceased. There’s schadenfreude in watching a woman who can drop tens of thousands of dollars on brunch declare bankruptcy in the U.S. and return to Brixton, the area in South London where she grew up, now gentrified. But it’s hard to fully dislike Mia – who will at least slip some cash to her waiter before she dines and dashes – and her funny forced grin. Indeed, there’s a hint of heartbreak to how she’d rather dog-sit for a predatory lesbian or spend the night in a warm car watching dogging (don’t google it, if you don’t know what it means) than admit to her friends and family that she’s back where she started life: broke. Streaming from Nov. 29.

The Agency, Paramount +

The impossible mission that screenwriting brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow; Ford v Ferrari) chose to accept: create an English-language version of The Bureau (Le Bureau des légendes), the French espionage series that ran to critical raves from 2015 and 2020 and already has a strong fan base in the anglophone world. The Agency streams its first episode Nov. 29 with Michael Fassbender taking on the role of lead spy: Martian, like his French predecessor Malotru, returns home after spending years undercover and finds it harder than expected to separate his own psyche and passions from that of the persona he played. Supporting cast includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere – and, if it doesn’t pan out, the five original French seasons are there to stream with subtitles on Paramount+, too.

The Fifth Estate: 50 Years of Truth, CBC and CBC Gem

During the international investigative journalism boom that followed Watergate, CBC’s head of current affairs Peter Herrndorf launched this truth-digging news program in 1975. Now, in the middle of its 50th season, The Fifth Estate investigates its own past with a special that revisits high points – such as its 1992 International Emmy Award-winning doc To Sell a War, which exposed the lies in the PR push behind the Gulf War – but doesn’t shy away from the low. Original co-host Adrienne Clarkson talks about the sexism and drinking habits of some of the early male staff, while Bob McKeown, making his final appearance after 31 years as a host, is unafraid to tell it like it is: “The cold hard truth is The Fifth Estate is a terrible name, because no one understands what it means.” The current depleted state of Canadian media and the spectre of a future with a defunded CBC is not left unspoken, either. What stories might we – and the world – miss? Notes Linden MacIntyre, who narrated To Sell a War: “Canadian angle is such an outdated notion in journalism. We are all in the same boat now – and that boat is in rough waters in a lot of different places.” On CBC and CBC Gem Nov. 29.