Okay, this is odd. Last week ViacomCBS announced it had struck a deal with Netflix to buy back the distribution rights to flagship Star Trek series Star Trek: Discovery. This meant that the show would not be available to Trekkers outside of the US and Canada until 2022 when the season would debut on Paramount+.

Today the company has announced that it will now release Star Trek: Discovery this coming Friday 26 November in territories with the ViacomCBS-owned Paramount+ or Pluto TV. New episodes will then roll out weekly in line with the US release. This actually works out a bit better for fans as there was a few days delay between the show being released in the US and arriving on Netflix internationally (as I recall - please, if anyone remembers this differently, please let me know).

STD will be available on Paramount+ where available. That is: Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, and Venezuela. If you are in one of these countries you can use the code STARTREK to get 50% off your first three months.

Meanwhile, for countries where Pluto TV has launched, it'll be available on that platform. This includes Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.

The fourth season will also be available to buy digitally in the UK, Germany, France, Russia, South Korea, and additional select countries.

So, why the change? ViacomCBS says it was fan outrage. Which should have been expected. The likely rationale was that there was a legal issue preventing the show from debuting immediately due to the Netflix partnership. So, either that was sorted out... or the delay was an artificial decision likely based on a desire for a longer marketing lead time (because a bus ad speaks to Trek fans more than Internet awareness?).

Star Trek: Discovery Season Four Lands on Paramount+ & Pluto TV Internationally
Take flight with all-new episodes premiering this week
Star TrekViacomCBS Networks Internationally

Married at first slight

Married At First Sight contestant Simon Blackburn has been booted off the show due to what is said to be vile and misogynistic content.

A Nine spokesperson:

“When unacceptable social media content was discovered in relation to Simon Blackburn we immediately took steps to remove him from the program. We won’t be making further comment”.

Meanwhile Blackburn has given his own statement that seems less than compelling:

“No further comment will be given! I’ve got Covid, let me rest!

Apparently Blackburn will be edited out of the show completely and his on-screen wife will be paired with another groom. Just like how love in real life works.

Groom dropped from Married at First Sight over “unacceptable social media” | TV Tonight
“We immediately took steps to remove him from the program,” says Nine after being alerted to homophobic & misogynistic posts.
TV TonightPublished byDavid Knox

TeeVee Snacks

  • The new Pete Holmes bowling sitcom Smallwood is being retitled by CBS to 'How We Roll'. Yet another in the long line of highly successful sitcom titles with pun names. Read: Deadline
  • Comcast is looking at pulling content from Hulu to beef up its Peacock streaming service. Read: WSJ
  • In a further commitment to massive nerd programing, Amazon Prime Video are nearing a deal to do a show based on video game Mass Effect. Read: Deadline

Get Back promises to change the way you look at the Beatles

Probably the most exciting show to debut this month is a three-part documentary series from Peter Jackson. He has restored hours and hours worth of old footage to bring to the screen The Beatles: Get Back.

Katie Baker at The Ringer has a good long read about the special and what Jackson has done to bring the series to the screen:

On both a visual and a content level, the four members of the band (as well as a fifth collaborator, Billy Preston, who stops by the Twickenham recording studio during the creative process) are rendered so clearly in Get Back doing things that are both so mundane and SO exceptional that it can be a struggle to remember that all these details weren’t workshopped, they just were. These aren’t the bowl-headed boys of the Please Please Me era, nor are they the caftan-wearing cast of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In Get Back, what is striking about the Beatles is how often they just seem like dudes who happen to rock.

The show streams on Hulu and will be available internationally on the Disney+ channel Star. I've already committed most of Saturday to watching this.

‘Get Back’ May Change the Way You Think About the Demise of the Beatles
The three-part Peter Jackson documentary, which begins Thanksgiving on Disney+, challenges what you know about the end of the band—and it does so using the Fab Four’s own voices
The RingerKatie Baker

What's next? Tomorrow.