How long has it been since I wrote a NOW cover all on my own? I honestly don’t remember, which means it’s been a while. But this week, I’m back on there with a look at Andrew Phung’s excellent new sitcom Run the Burbs, and the work that he and his team have put into building an eclectic, eccentric world built around the very specific, distinctly Canadian Pham fam.

In the writing of the piece, I interviewed Andrew, co-star and co-writer Rakhee Morzaria and co-creator Scott Townend — and then Andrew and I went and hung out at the border of East York and Scarborough for extra color, which was more complicated than it should have been (thanks, Omicron) but ended up with the two of us just walking around chatting for an hour or so, accompanied by NOW photographer Nick Lachance,  which turned out to be the heart of the story.

So go read the piece, and then listen to today’s episode of NOW What for most of the conversation with Andrew, Rakhee and Scott, which digs further into their specific choices, the casting of the show and the ambitions they have for the this season and beyond. (If you’re in Canada, the pilot episode is streaming on CBC Gem.)

In non-Burbs coverage, there’s this week’s What to Watch page, where I reviewed The Tender Bar and Criterion’s glorious 4K edition of The Red Shoes, and our January lookaheads for Disney+, Crave and CBC Gem. (Okay, technically I snuck a review of Run the Burbs into the Gem piece. It’s a slow month and I needed content!)

Also, I knocked Doug Ford’s stupid Succession photo op around in an op-ed, because it’s stupid and it deserves as much mockery as can be heaped upon it. That is all.