What to watch on CBC Gem in March 2022

February 26, 2022Norman Wilner

Here’s everything new coming to CBC Gem in March 2022, including these shows highlighted by NOW critics.

Hello (Again)

Created by Nathalie Younglai and Simu Liu – who talked about pitching it to CBC back when we featured him as one of Canada’s rising screen stars – this web series stars Dark Matter’s Alex Mallari Jr. as a cook who falls for a medical resident (Rong Fu, soon to be seen in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds), only to see the relationship end too soon. But a supernatural time loop situation gives him the chance to get things right… or at least to keep trying. March 25

Revenge Of The Black Best Friend

Created, co-written and co-produced by CBC Arts presenter/producer Amanda Parris, this digital series stars The Porter’s Olunike Adeliyi – who was also in that rising screen stars issue, as it happens – as Dr. Toni Shakur, “a self-help guru whose singular mission is to cancel the entertainment industry’s reliance on token Black characters… before she gets cancelled herself.” Nice. March 31

Evil By Design: Surviving Nygard

Expanded from the 2021 podcast, this three-part CBC Docs series explores the decades of sexual assault allegations against fashion mogul Peter Nygard – who was in the news again in January when he was denied bail on sex assault and forcible confinement charges – with a mixture of archival footage and new testimony from “investigative reporters and the survivors themselves.” March 17

You’re Sleeping, Nicole

Set over a lazy summer in a small Quebec town where things are just the tiniest bit weird, Stéphane Lafleur’s charmingly shapeless 2014 dramedy lands on Gem to remind us every winter eventually ends. Enjoy the lazy digressions of Julianne Côté’s insomniac Nicole and her restless best friend Véronique (Catherine St-Laurent) and all the oddball characters they encounter over the course of the rambling, eccentric picture. Writer/director Lafleur mostly works as an editor, but he has a real flair for the casually absurd; just let his movie wash over you, you’ll see. March 6

Nelly

After the intimate Nuit #1 and the sprawling Our Loved Ones, Quebec writer/director Anne Émond switched modes yet again with this subjective 2016 drama about the life and work of late author Nelly Arcan (the pen name of Isabelle Fortier). Émond’s movie mixes flashes of Fortier’s life – her youth, a toxic relationship, the crushing despair of her final years – with dramatizations of Arcan’s autobiographical novels about a sex worker who calls herself Cynthia. It’s trickier to describe than it is to experience, thanks to Émond’s confident direction and Mylène Mackay’s revelatory performance as the real and imagined versions of Arcan. Barely released in English Canada, it’s well worth a look. March 4

Knives Out

No, we don’t know how CBC managed to snag Rian Johnson’s delightfully arch whodunit either. But they did, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, it absolutely holds up – and if you haven’t seen it at all, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for you. The jewel in the crown of 2019’s eat-the-rich thrillers sends Daniel Craig’s eccentric sleuth Benoit Blanc and Ana de Armas’s anxious nurse Marta Cabrera racing to figure out who wanted her employer, mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), dead. The suspects include his entire family, played by Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Chris Evans, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell and Riki Lindhome. It’s Agatha Christie updated for Trump-era America, and it’s a blast. March 27

The full list of new titles available on CBC Gem in March 2022 by date:

March 1

Bangla Surf Girls
The Changemakers
Dear Future Children
The Little Queen
Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche
Spreadsheet
The Witches Of The Orient

March 2

Leftover Women
Lift Like A Girl

March 3

Alma’s Not Normal

March 4

Dramaworld (season 2)
Escape To The Chateau (season 9)
Nelly
Ripper Street (season 4)
Unless

March 5

Never Steady, Never Still

March 6

You’re Sleeping, Nicole

March 11

Detention Adventure (season 3)
Fragile
Jamie & Jimmy’s Food Fight Club (seasons 6-7)
People Just Do Nothing (season 3)

March 15

The Incredible Vanishing Sisters

March 17

Evil By Design: Surviving Nygard

March 18

The Big Sex Talk
Friday Night Dinner (seasons 1-2)
The Honourable Woman
Real Blackity Talk
The Secret

March 21

Miss S (season 1)

March 22

The Last Guide

March 25

Frick, I Love Nature
Hello (Again)
Homeschooled
Ladhood (season 2)
Raufikat’s Better Bake Along
Something Undone (season 2)
Uytae Lee’s Stories About Here