| At the start of any given year, journalists and industry watchers will sit down, review the projects slated to be released over the next 12 months, and attempt to formulate a farmer’s almanac of sorts—predicting the hits and pop cultural milestones that will dominate the news cycle. There isn’t much of a science to it, save for known qualities such as star power, popular franchises and patterns of consumption, but even with those measures in place during a regular year, sure-fire hits can still end up flopping while smaller projects explode in popularity. It’s an unpredictable industry. Then you get an overall unpredictable year like this one. Few could have foreseen the circumstances of 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut down the film and television industry outright, shuttled all major theatrical releases and created a large and captive audience for streamed content. In many ways, the year became a bit of a wild west in terms of content consumption, with everyone desperate to figure out what would resonate. True crime? Sure! Feel good comedy? Yup. Drag queens? You bet. So what have Canadians been watching on their streaming platforms? Here are the most popular shows and movies from the past five-plus months of lockdown. |
