The Canadian Cable Tale
The recently released TV show The Handmaid’s Tale, is a lesson in how backwards the cable industry in Canada is. If you don’t know about the show it’s based on a 1985 dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood,
Hulu the US streaming service is producing the series and it was filmed in Toronto, Hamilton, and Cambridge, Ontario from September 2016 to February 2017.
Hulu premiered the first 3 episodes on its streaming service in the US on April 26, 2017, with the subsequent seven episodes added on a weekly basis. In Canada the show was picked up by Bravo (owned by Bell Media) and they began broadcasting the first two episodes on April 30, 2017. Now that is only a difference 4 days for the two first episodes but by episode 6 there was a difference of 11 days with Hulu releasing episode 6 on May 17th and Bravo not broadcasting episode 6 until May 28th.
As it stands right now Hulu has two more episodes available that Bravo hasn’t even broadcast yet. Now for some that might not be a big deal. The typical Canadian attitude would be for us to just be thankful that the show is available all the way up here in Canada. From our perspective though it echoes some of the themes from the show itself about abuse of power and corruption and morality issues.
No spoilers ahead since many of you probably haven’t seen the show in its entirety yet, but spoilers are something we want to talk about.
Lets face it, most of the media we consume comes from the US. In this case we have a story from a Canadian author, filmed in Canada by a US production and yet the options for Canadians to watch it is limited.
It’s almost comical in a way.
Bell could release the show in a wider release or on the same schedule as Hulu on their own streaming service (CraveTV) but they won’t put it up there until after it’s been broadcast on a network they own which you can only get through traditional cable.
While the show itself is set in a made up dystopian future we do have it pretty good in Canada but as someone who does use the internet often this exact scenario is what turned me into a cord cutter 6 years ago when several shows
I was hearing about online were not even picked up by any Canadian networks and like the characters in The Handmaids Tale I felt trapped by my Canadian cable masters.
I was already paying an arm and a leg for lots of shows I didn’t want and I was tired of letting someone else decide what I could and couldn’t watch and when.
There is a phrase in Atwood’s book and used in the show.
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”
Cutting the cord freed me of the ridiculous approach of the Canadian cable companies. I won’t tell you what the phrase means, Canadian cable customers can find out when Bell finally airs that episode.