With their award-winning show returning to CBC next week, stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Simu Liu and Andrew Phung join Norm for a conversation about Season 5's darker turn, shooting during COVID and what it means to have Kim’s Convenience on the air right now.

In a new story on the NOW website, staff writer Julia Mastroianni looks at how queer spaces face different financial challenges than their mainstream equivalents. Julia and Shameful Tiki’s Alana Nogueda join Norm to discuss the ways in which queer bar owners are trying to hold their community together, even as they’re forced apart.

We’d like to do something optimistic to ring in the new year, so Norm asks Kelsey Adams, Julia Mastroianni, Radheyan Simonpillai and Glenn Sumi to share one thing they hope to accomplish in 2021 … whether or not they get to leave the house.

Real estate brokers and urban planners recap rising prices in the Toronto real estate market in 2020, how the upcoming home vacancy tax and other efforts to make housing affordable meets with considerable challenges and what to expect in 2021.

NOW’s political editor Enzo DiMatteo catches up with Rechev Browne, the grocery store worker featured in our spring frontline heroes issue. Rechev revisits his experience hazarding COVID-19 while working at No Frills and dealing with people’s daily frustrations and microaggressions. He explain’s how attitudes have evolved and the sentiment celebrating frontline workers has withered away along with pandemic pay.

Santa may be on ice during the pandemic but the holiday movie season is in full effect. Wonder Woman 1984, Pixar’s Soul, Promising Young Woman and Tom Hanks in News of the World are joining movies in theatres and online like Mank, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Nomadland to compete for your holiday viewing attention. NOW’s critics Norm Wilner, Radheyan Simonpillai, Glenn Sumi and Kevin Ritchie debate all the new releases See below for time stamps if you want to skip ahead to a particular movie conversation.

Wonder Woman 1984 – 2:00

Soul – 16:00

News of the World – 23:00

Promising Young Woman – 26:30

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – 40:00

Mank – 45:30

Nomadland – 52:30

Shouldn’t we be in a lockdown by now? Norm checks in with Newmarket biostatistician Ryan Imgrund to find out where things stand right now, what Ontarians could and should be doing differently in their daily lives, and what Doug Ford ought to be doing at the provincial level.

Staff writer Kelsey Adams, assistant entertainment editor Glenn Sumi and culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai join Norm for a conversation about the most important stories of 2020, and maybe scrape together a sense of closure for this endless year. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

Culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai and music editor Richard Trapunski join Norm to go through NOW’s list of the year’s best television. Why did we put I May Destroy You above Ted Lasso? Why didn’t The Queen’s Gambit or Tiger King make the cut? Press play and find out.

It’s NOW’s Binge Issue, so we thought you’d like to hear culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai’s interview with Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the Mississauga teen who stars in Mindy Kaling’s Netflix series Never Have I Ever, about what she learned shooting the first season, what she’s bringing to the second season, and why 2020 has been a particularly weird time to become famous.