diff --git a/couchpotato/core/helpers/encoding.py b/couchpotato/core/helpers/encoding.py
index 0b85f64b..f896a62e 100644
--- a/couchpotato/core/helpers/encoding.py
+++ b/couchpotato/core/helpers/encoding.py
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ def sp(path, *args):
     # Replace *NIX ambiguous '//' at the beginning of a path with '/' (crashes guessit)
     path = re.sub('^//', '/', path)
 
-    return path
+    return toUnicode(path)
 
 
 def ek(original, *args):