This week’s TV news includes news for one of the Disney+ Avengers followup series, a major reality TV shakeup, and more big stories.
The upcoming Star Trek streaming series focused on the adventures of Sir Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard has revealed its official title and a first look at the series. Star Trek: Picard will see the actor reprise his role from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and will follow the iconic character “into the next chapter of his life,” according to the official description. While there’s still no premiere date for the series, you can watch the first teaser trailer above — which appears to show the admiral unceremoniously pulled from his blissful retirement in a vineyard and back to Starfleet. The series also stars Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera, and Harry Treadaway.
In other new TV trailer news, you can now watch the following:
(Photo by © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
The upcoming Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier has recruited Kari Skogland to direct. The veteran television director has helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Walking Dead, The Americans, and upcoming episodes of Showtime’s Fox News drama The Loudest Voice, AMC’s vampire drama NOS4A2, and Starz’s supernatural spy drama The Rook.
Additionally, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Captain America: Civil War stars Daniel Brühl and Emily VanCamp, who played the villain Zemo and spy Sharon Carter (a.k.a. Peggy Carter’s grand-niece), are set to reprise their roles in the six-episode miniseries.
Anyone who’s seen Avengers: Endgame knows that Cap (Chris Evans) decides to pass his mantle on to Anthony Mackie’s Falcon rather than Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier. The Disney+ series will explore the relationship of the two titular characters.
NBC had already announced that, like always, original coaches Adam Levine and Blake Shelton would return to The Voice for season 17 in the fall, this time alongside relative newbies Kelly Clarkson and John Legend. But the Maroon 5 singer shocked fans and his fellow coaches when he announced two weeks later that he was leaving the series. In a lengthy Instagram post, Levine said he’d decided it was time to depart the singing competition “that will be close to my heart forever.”
The news was actually broken by Voice host Carson Daly during the Today show. Later, Shelton, Clarkson, and Legend all posted messages in support of their costar, who saw his only finalists eliminated in the top 13 week of season 16, leaving him with no team members to champion during the last few weeks of the season’s live shows.
Having a hard time wrapping my head around @adamlevine not being at @NBCTheVoice anymore. After 16 seasons that changed both of ours lives. I only found out about this yesterday and it hasn’t set in on me yet. Gonna miss working with that idiot.
— Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 24, 2019
Found out last night about @adamlevine leaving The Voice & while I get that he’s been doing the show 4 a while & wants to step away, it will be weird showing up 4 work & he’s not there ? To start an amazing show from the ground up is a big deal!
— Kelly Clarkson (@kellyclarkson) May 24, 2019
Social media accounts for The Voice also posted a note in tribute to Levine, noting that the door was open for his return and also revealing that former coach Gwen Stefani would step into Levine’s revolving chair for the upcoming 17th season.
— The Voice (@NBCTheVoice) May 24, 2019
Black Mirror’s highly anticipated fifth season is set to drop June 5, and Netflix has revealed the episode titles, descriptions, and stars of the three new episodes. “Smithereens” will star Andrew Scott, Damson Idris, and Topher Grace in a story about “a cab driver with an agenda [who] becomes the centre of attention on a day that rapidly spirals out of control.”
In “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too,” “a lonely teenager yearns to connect with her favorite pop star — whose charmed existence isn’t quite as rosy it appears.” Miley Cyrus plays the pop star alongside Angourie Rice and Madison Davenport. And in “Striking Vipers,” “two estranged college friends reunite in later life, triggering a series of events that could alter their lives forever.” Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Beharie, Pom Klementieff, and Ludi Lin star.
BREAKING NEWS! Straight from the set of Series 12! Guess who’s back ??? #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/s7D1MSDDwX
— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) May 21, 2019
The official Doctor Who Twitter account released the very first photo from the sci-fi series’ upcoming twelfth season, starring Jodie Whittaker as the titular time-traveling alien. The image reveals that the Time Lord will face-off with a Judoon, one of the rhinoceros-looking space police first seen by David Tennant’s Ninth Doctor.
“The Judoon are storming back into Doctor Who in full force, and the streets of Gloucester aren’t safe. If anyone has anything to hide, confess now,” showrunner Chris Chibnall said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “The Judoon are taking no prisoners, and will stop at nothing to fulfil their mission! The whole team on Doctor Who are delighted and scared in equal measure to welcome them back: one of many treats we’ve got in store for viewers next series. And we’re over the moon (with Judoon), to be welcoming the wondrous Neil Stuke as guest star. We can’t wait to show you what happens when his path crosses with the Thirteenth Doctor.”
(Photo by Jason Mendez/Everett Collection)
Social media superstar, supermodel, and TV host Chrissy Teigen is taking on a new role: judge. In her new series, Chrissy’s Court, she’ll preside over one small claims case per short-form episode on Quibi, the short-form streaming platform from DreamWorks Animation co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. That’s not all — Teigen’s mom, Pepper Thai, will serve as the bailiff in each case, which will feature real people and real disputes.
“When Cellino & Barnes broke up, I was devastated. I knew I had to take matters into my own hands. Here’s one jury duty you won’t want to miss,” Teigen said in a statement announcing the news. The series’ premiere date is still TBD.
The upcoming sequel series to Showtime’s drama The L Word has an official title: it’ll be called The L Word: Generation Q. Original series stars Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moennig, and Leisha Hailey are all returning, as is original creator Ilene Chaiken, who will be an executive producer. The new showrunner is Marja-Lewis Ryan (Netflix’s 6 Balloons), and the series will begin production in Los Angeles this summer.
“Beals, Moennig and Hailey will resume their original roles alongside a new generation of diverse, self-possessed LGBTQIA characters experiencing love, heartbreak, sex, setbacks and success in L.A.,” according to the new series’ official description. The L Word: Generation Q will premiere on Showtime in Fall 2019, more than 10 years after the original series last aired.
(Photo by Paul Sarkis/Showtime)
Joshua Jackson is reuniting with his Cruel Intentions costar Reese Witherspoon in Hulu’s upcoming adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere, the eight-episode limited series based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller. Jackson (pictured, center) will play Bill Richardson, a well-to-do attorney who hails from modest means who is the “perfectly suited counterweight to his energetic and strong-willed wife, Elena,” played by Witherspoon. “When Bill agrees to represent their friends in a fiery custody battle, the couple begin to fight about more than just their challenging youngest daughter, Izzy.”
Witherspoon is executive producing the series alongside costar Kerry Washington and showrunner Liz Tigelaar. Rosemarie DeWitt, Jade Pettyjohn, Jordan Elsass, Gavin Lewis, Megan Stott, and Lexi Underwood also star.
In more casting news, Holly Hunter has signed on to play a media conglomerate CEO in the upcoming second season of HBO’s Succession.
Anna Kendrick has signed on for a new anthology series called Love Life set to debut on the upcoming WarnerMedia streaming service. The first season of the 10-episode half-hour series, executive produced by Kendrick and her A Simple Favor director Paul Feig, will star Kendrick as a woman looking for love. Each season of the rom-com, which was created by Sam Boyd, will follow a different protagonist’s quest for love, according to Variety.
Finally, NCIS star Cote de Pablo — whose exit in the series’ 11th season has been lamented by fans for years — returned to the series in a surprise season 16 finale cameo. Following the episode, creators Frank Cardea and Steven D. Binder said in a statement to TVLine that their leading lady will return in the upcoming 17th season premiere.
“This surprise moment is just the beginning,” Cardea and Binder said in the statement. “We are thrilled to share that Cote de Pablo will guest star in the NCIS Season 17 premiere this fall, as Ziva’s warning to Gibbs unfolds.”
