Darren McMullen and Renee Bargh find their Voices
Presenter and actor Darren McMullen will return to The Voice as co-host for its 2020 season, Nine has confirmed. McMullen previously hosted the first four seasons of the show, as well as its spin-off series, The Voice Kids. He will be joined by former Channel V presenter Renee Bargh, who will return from her LA-based gig co-hosting Extra to take up duties on The Voice. The pair are replacing Sonia Kruger, who hosted the show over the last five years and has returned to the Seven Network. Production on the series will shift this year to a purpose-built studio in western Sydney; Nine, which owns this masthead, has confirmed 2019's coaches Boy George, Kelly Rowland, Guy Sebastian and Delta Goodrem will all return for the new season.
Darren McMullen and Renee Bargh are the new hosts of The Voice Australia.
Gavin & Stacey special episode sets TV ratings records
In a powerful case for long-arc audience tracking, the Gavin & Stacey special episode broadcast in the UK at Christmas has stretched its live viewing audience of 11.5 million to 17.1 million, the BBC has reported. The astonishing numbers position the special as the most-watched TV program in the UK since 2010. (The record, 17.7 million viewers, was previously held by a season final of talent show The X-Factor.) The Gavin & Stacey special, the first written by creators James Corden and Ruth Jones in a decade, also drew 4.4 million replays on the BBC's iPlayer streaming platform.
Something to celebrate: Gavin & Stacey sets ratings records.Credit:BBC
Legendary newsman Jim Lehrer dies
Legendary American newscaster Jim Lehrer has died; he was 85. In the US Lehrer was one of the enduring faces of public television news, as a presenter on the PBS network. Australian audiences knew him from SBS broadcasts of the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, one of PBS's flagship programs in the 1980s and 1990s. Lehrer, who was respected as one of American broadcasting's most ethical journalists, was born in Kansas and studied journalism at the University of Missouri. Prior to his work on PBS, Lehrer worked for The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald.
Legendary newsman Jim Lehrer died on January 23. Credit:PBS via AP
Friends creator signs new TV deal
American writer and TV producer Marta Kauffman has signed a content development deal with the Disney-owned Fox 21 Television Studios. Under the terms of the deal, Kauffman's company Okay Goodnight will develop projects for linear and streaming platforms. The first project on the slate is The Dreamers, based on the novel by Karen Thompson Walker, about the residents of a college town who must contend with a mysterious virus. In addition to co-creating the iconic comedy Friends and Netflix's flagship comedy Grace and Frankie, Kauffman has just received the Norman Lear Achievement Award at the 2020 Producers Guild of America Awards.
Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman, pictured here at the Producers Guild of America Awards in mid-January, has inked a deal with Fox 21 Television Studios. Credit:AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
DC TV series hints at iconic hero's return
The conclusion of the DC Comics Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, which linked the Supergirl, Arrow, Batwoman, Flash and DC Legends shows, has hinted at the introduction of characters from the animated Super Friends cartoon, including Wonder Twins Zan and Jayna and their monkey, Gleek. It also gave one of Arrow's characters, John Diggle (David Ramsey), a superhuman future with the sudden appearance of a Green Lantern "power ring", meaning Diggle could be bound for either of two new DC franchise shows in development: a Superman & Lois series for the US CW network, or a Green Lantern series, for the streaming platform HBO Max.
US network reboots The Equalizer
The US network CBS has commissioned a remake of the 1980s crime-thriller series The Equalizer. The reboot will star actress Queen Latifah in the lead role; she will also executive produce the series. The original series starred British actor Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, a former covert operations agent who freelanced as a espionage troubleshooter. (It was later remade as a feature film starring Denzel Washington.) The reboot has been written by Andrew Marlowe and Terri Miller with Latifah playing "an enigmatic figure who uses her extensive skills to help those with nowhere else to turn".
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