What to watch on CBC Gem in January 2021

December 24, 2020NOW Staff

Idris Elba in In The Long Run, hitting CBC Gem in January 2021

Here is everything new coming to CBC Gem in January 2021, including a few highlights by NOW critics.

In The Long Run (season 3)

The third season of Idris Elba’s semi-autobiographical dramedy series aired in the UK last summer and and now arrives on CBC Gem in January. Set in a fictitious East London housing estate in the 80s, the show stars Elba as Walter, a factory worker based on his dad. The season tackles gentrification and the arrival of Walter’s mother from Sierra Leone. January 8

Making Muriel

Part of a whack of Australian-produced titles hitting CBC Gem just in time for Australia Day, this documentary revisits Muriel’s Wedding, the 1994 surprise hit comedy about an ABBA-obsessed small-town girl that launched the careers of Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths. Making Muriel features new interviews with Colette and Griffiths on the film’s continued popularity and follows the cast of a Sydney-based theatre company that’s turning the movie into a stage musical. January 26

Wexford Plaza

Joyce Wong’s modest and disarming character study finds the perfect setting in Scarborough’s Wexford Plaza. Wong and her cinematographer Maya Bancovic cook up beautiful ways to make Scarborough look narrow and isolated with no avenues for escape. They essentially draft the emotions of a strip plaza security guard and bartender onto the space. Those familiar with the area surrounding Wexford Plaza know it’s pretty lively, but the sickly yellow glow Wong and Bacovic add lends a new perspective and existential weight. January 22

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World

An essential watch for music fans, Catherine Bainbridge’s documentary looks at the enduring – and typically unacknowledged – influence of Indigenous musicians on mainstream music. Subjects in the film include Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson and many more. January 29

Colossal

This fantastical comedy from cult writer/director Nacho Vigalondo is a giant-monster movie played out at a human level – and that’s not a metaphor. Anne Hathaway plays an alcoholic New Yorker who returns to her childhood town to dry out and decide whether to patch things up with her boyfriend (Dan Stevens). Once there, she runs into an old friend (Jason Sudeikis) and drinks some more, and the next day she wakes up to discover a giant monster has stomped through Seoul… and she’s somehow responsible. January 8

The full list of new titles available on CBC Gem in January 2021 by date:

December 31

Adventures In Public School

January 1

Call The Midwife (season 2)

January 8

Colosssal

Genius Factory

In The Long Run (season 3)

January 10

Les Misérables

January 13