PBS Docs Launching Prime Video Channel Canada

PBS Distribution has launched PBS Documentaries in Canada on Amazon’s Prime Video.

The doc-focused subscription channel with around 1,000 films, including from Ken Burns and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  to Nova, Frontline, American Masters, Nature, American Experience, Independent Lens and Pov, will be available for Canadians for CAN$5.99 (US$4.35) a month when they already have an Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscription.

The move into Canada for the PBS Documentaries follows the launch of the PBS Masterpiece Channel north of the border in 2020.

“We are delighted to offer a significant volume of high-quality content, including our award-winning documentaries to fans in Canada. This offering complements our successful launch of the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel in Canada,” Andrea Downing, president of PBS Distribution, said in a statement on Tuesday.

PBS TV stations have long aired in Canada, but the launch of the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel allows catch-up viewing, including of classic Ken Burns docs like The Vietnam War, Baseball, The American Buffalo, The U.S. and the Holocaust.

“When the channel launched in the U.S. a few years ago, it fulfilled a dream that we’d had for many years — for our full library of work to live in one easily accessible destination. We also look forward to adding our next film — our first non-American subject — Leonardo da Vinci, to this collection in November,” Ken Burns said of the Canadian channel launch in his own statement.

Leonardo da Vinci, a two-part, four-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon — and the iconic filmmaker’s first film about a non-American subject as it explores the Italian Renaissance master’s art and scientific explorations — will air Nov. 18 and 19.

Other original docuseries to get library viewing in Canada includes The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Gilded Age, Gospel and Finding Your Roots.