The Sexiest Man in Winnipeg, Prime Video
No, this documentary is not about Winnipeg Jets captain Adam Lowry, who scored the double overtime winner in Game 7 last weekend. It’s about Steve Vogelsang who, in the 1990s, was riding high in Winnipeg – a popular local sports anchor on CKY-DT wearing a wardrobe supplied by Harry Rosen and named sexiest in the city by local alt-weekly Uptown (RIP). Vogelsang later receded from public view and began teaching journalism. But, in 2017, he was back on the news, this time as a subject, when he was arrested after a spree of bank robberies in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Co-directed by Charlie Siskel and Ben Daughtrey, this doc’s strange stylistic twist is that it gets Vogelsang – now out of jail – to participate in re-enactments of his own crimes as it tries to glean how much of his motive was attention rather than money. Leaning into a weird true-crime vibe, it’s narrated by a bison that is voiced by Will Arnett, too. What takes it down a peg, however, is how it skims over relevant facts such as a decade-long affair with a former journalism student, who was granted a protection order against him, that led up to the robberies.
Cry Wolf, CBC Gem
Cry Wolf, on CBC Gem.andrej vasilenko/CBC GEM
Get out your Google Maps: This Swedish crime series (added to Gem May 9) is set in Haparanda, right at the top of the Gulf of Bothnia, on the border with Finland. Detective Hannah Webster (Eva Melander) sets off on an investigation after human remains are found in the stomach of a wolf. A drug deal has gone south, a young uninvolved couple has unwisely tried to make off with the money and Ripley‘s Eliot Sumner, playing a Russian doing an Anton Chigurh impression, is shanking every kindly Scandanavian who gets in their path on the way to recover the cash. Vargasommar, as it was called in its original Swedish, is written by Oskar Soderlund with Hans Rosenfeldt, whose previous border-spanning series The Bridge was a purer example of Nordic noir, with less copycatting of the Coen brothers.
Conan O’Brien Must Go, Crave
Conan O’Brien Must Go, on Crave.Crave
Once America’s most polarizing late-night talk-show hosts, Conan O’Brien is having a big year back in the mainstream. First, he hosted the Oscars with such ease that he was immediately rehired for 2026. Then, he was honoured with what may end up being the very last Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the troubled, Trumped-up Kennedy Center, in a ceremony that was filmed and now on Netflix.
Now, back for a second, short season on Crave (Thursdays), Conan O’Brien Must Go – a Max travel show spun out of his podcasts – is definitely for the comedian’s most hard-core fans (who he visits around the world as part of the premise). I watched the season premiere, which sees him schtick around Spain with special guest Javier Bardem, and somehow ended knowing less about the country than when I started.
The Two Popes, Netflix
The Two Popes, on Netflix.Peter Mountain/Netflix
Conclave (on Prime Video), Edward Berger’s recent Oscar-nominated Catholic conspiracy thriller, has been smoking up the chimney of the streaming charts since Pope Francis died. But for a less fanciful and more fact-based movie about pope succession, try The Two Popes directed by Fernando Meirelles. The 2019 film imagines the conversations between Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), who eventually became Pope Francis, in the wake of the Vatican leaks scandal. “Film is a visual, tangible medium, a hard place to make something as invisible and ineffable as faith seem real let alone important,” The Globe and Mail’s Kate Taylor wrote in her Critic’s Pick review. “Yet here, not merely Vatican politics but also Catholic faith are satisfyingly dramatic.”
The Young Pope, Crave
The Young Pope, on Crave.Gianni Fiorito/The Associated Press
This strange satirical and stylized 2016 series created by Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino imagines a young New York cardinal named Lenny Belardo (Jude Law) getting elected pope in a conclave as a compromise candidate. Though Pius XIII at first seems like a Cherry Coke-sipping breath of fresh air in the Vatican, he soon reveals himself to be a stone-hearted sociopath, John Doyle wrote in a review for The Globe and Mail: “It is very Italian, very camp, unsettling and slightly mad. Also, it’s a refreshing kind of drama – elliptical, gorgeously nuanced and yet forcefully about faith and power.” The Young Pope‘s sole season is on Crave – and so is its sequel series, The New Pope, starring John Malkovich.
