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British detective drama Foyle’s War will make its return to Australian screens next month with a brand new series.

The ITV production, which had its season seven premiere in the UK earlier this month, will screen the new three-part series on ABC1 from May 9.

The series will premiere at 8:30pm with the first episode ‘The Russian House’.

In this new series of Foyle’s War it is July 1945 and while VE Day has been celebrated in Britain, the war continues elsewhere in the world. The immediate aftermath of war was not a time of jubilation and optimism, as had been expected. The country was exhausted and poverty-stricken, families torn apart and rations tighter than ever before. Like everyone else, Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) needs to feel his way in this new world as he faces some of his toughest challenges and gripping plots to date. Keen to retire, but bound to his old job by the steep rise in violent crime that has swept the country, Foyle is thrust into the dangerous worlds of international conspiracy and execution, military racism and national betrayal.

Honeysuckle Weeks returns as Samantha Stewart, previously Foyle’s driver. Now that peace has been declared she dabbles in various jobs until she meets a brilliant mathematician called Adam, played by Max Brown, who has recently taken over a Hastings guest house and is desperately in need of help. Meanwhile Anthony Howell reprises his role as D.S. Milner, who has been promoted and is now working for Brighton police force.

Australian drama series The Circuit has taken home another award at the prestigious Chicago International Film Festival.

The SBS series has won the Silver Hugo award for best television mini-series for the second time after picking up the award for the first series back in 2008.

SBS Manager of Production and Development Denise Eriksen said, “It’s particularly appropriate that The Circuit has won this prestigious award. This series takes audiences to parts of Australia they don’t normally visit, to meet actors they rarely see on their screens and to hear stories that are new to them.”

Set in rural Western Australia, The Circuit stars Aaron Pederson and Gary Sweet and is centred on the arrival of Pederson’s lawyer Drew Ellis at the Kimberley Circuit Court.

Australia’s Got Talent has only been back for one episode and already buzzed contestants are speaking out in annoyance at judge Kyle Sandilands’ comments fired their way while on the show.

A square dancing troupe and a middle-aged Melbourne singer are among those to have criticised the judges over comments they made about them while they were on stage in front of both a studio and TV audience.

Sandilands asked Melbourne woman Heather Cook whether she was male or female.

“I felt the whole experience was devastating, and very unfair and unnecessary, and he destroyed any opportunity I had of demonstrating my voice to its fullest potential.” She said following the show.

Darren Taylor of the square dancing troupe has shown his annoyance over the way the judges launched into him and his fellow members as soon as they walked out on stage.

“I have never experienced anything like it before,” he said.

“But as soon as we walked out Brian (McFadden) buzzed us. He said one of our girls looked like a toilet-roll doll. Dannii (Minogue) also zeroed in on what we were wearing and Kyle said I had my jumper tucked into my pants.”

He is also claiming that his troupe did not sign up for the show, instead that they were asked by producers of Seven’s show to perform.

“We didn’t apply. They called us and said they really wanted square dancers this year because they wanted it to be a community show.”

But Taylor believes the producers set them up to recieve a hiding from the judges, all for the sake of entertainment.

A Seven spokeswoman has said judging was no harsher than previous years.

Source: Herald Sun

Channel Nine is lodged a $10 million dollar bid to become the free-to-air home of the Wallabies.

The rights to both the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cups are already in the hands of NINE and Fox but it is understood chief executive David Gyngell is after Tri-Nations and home tests along with a highlights package of the new Super 15 competition.

The original asking price for the rugby rights was around the $15-20 million mark, well above the $10 Nine is reported to have offered.

If the transaction is made, Nine will hold the broadcast right to both rugby codes.

Rugby union viewership, however, is on the decline with audiences in 2001 reaching upwards of 1.5 million in the metropolitan areas whereas nowadays audiences struggle to reach half that.

Sources close to the bidding process said there was more than one interested party involved.

Source: The Australian

Seven has fired the first shot in the Wednesday night ratings war with its big-budget war drama The Pacific narrowly taking out the top spot last night.

In preliminary ratings out this morning, the premiere of the joint HBO/Seven series drew nearly 1.6 million viewers across the five metropolitan areas with Nine’s midweek tent-pole Hey Hey It’s Saturday coming in runner-up with just over 1.5 million.

The Pacific, shot largely in and around Australia, outperformed local comedy Hey Hey everywhere except Melbourne where the Daryl Somers-hosted show topped.

Ten’s Wednesday line-up which features reality series The Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance Australia performed poorly in comparison.

Ratings source: OzTAM

Hit cartoon South Park will make a return to Australian screens in May.

All new episodes of the American comedy, which follows the trials and tribulations of everybody’s favourite Colorado kids, will screen Mondays on SBS ONE from May 3 at 10pm.

Kicking off the new run is the episode “Fatbeard”, the seventh episode in season 13, which sees Cartman become a pirate. The episode originally screened in the US in April of 2009.

Dystopian sci-fi drama Survivors has been axed by BBC One following two seasons.

The show, described as being loosely based on the Terry Nation novel and not the original 1970’s series of the same name, has been ended following dwindling audience numbers.

Channel Nine screened the first season of the show here late last month.

Survivors followed a small group of people who survived a vicious outbreak of some unknown strain of influenza which wiped out most of the human race. The first season ran in the UK in late 2008 and the second finished screening in February of this year.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “The BBC is committed to making a broad range of varied and ambitious drama, but in order to achieve this we do have to move on from some pieces in order to allow new work to come through. After two series Survivors will not be returning.”

The series was also shown internationally in the likes of South Africa, America and France.

It’s war on and off the screens tonight with a showdown between Seven and Nine for the top ratings spot.

Seven’s Steven Spielberg-backed drama The Pacific will premiere tonight at 8.30pm taking on Nine’s first episode of returning comedy show Hey Hey It’s Saturday which screens for its tow hours starting at 7.30pm.

With the bumper season of premieres kicking off with Underbelly: The Golden Mile’s massive premiere audience on Sunday night, the networks will look to secure Wednesday night with their hugely contrasting shows.

The Pacific, co-produced by Seven and with heavyweights Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks behind it, has received indifferent reviews following its premiere in the US, while Hey Hey will return hot after its success last year in its two re-union specials.

The Biggest Loser continues on Ten tonight at 7.30pm followed by So You Think You Can Dance Australia at 8.00pm. However, next Monday ten will unleash its heavy artillery will the return of Masterchef Australia which will go up against Hey Hey in the 7.30pm slot.

Rule changes to Masterchef Australia will keep both contestants and viewers guessing when it premieres on Ten tomorrow night.

The hit reality cooking show has shaken up the rules for its second season in a bid to keep contestants on their toes and stop them from becoming complacent.

“The contestants thought they knew the rules – well, they didn’t.” Judge Matt Preston says of the new series.

A bunch of well-known chefs will make an appearance on the show, including the likes of Matt Moran, Neil Perry, Tony Bilson, Guillaume Brahimi and Tetsuya Wakuda.

After the mammoth success of last year’s first Masterchef Australia series, Ten has decided to shift the show to the slightly later 7.30pm timeslot. Throughout the week, it will go up against The Zoo, Australia’s Got Talent, Hey Hey it’s Saturday and Better Homes and Gardens among others.

The premiere episode will see the judges cull five people from the original top 50.

Masterchef Australia will screen weekdays from Monday 19 April on Ten.

Despite featuring on the two re-union specials last year, Hey Hey It’s Saturday favourite Jacki MacDonald is an unlikely starter for the opening episode of the series.

Hey Hey It’s Saturday returns to the screen tonight with the first of what is expected to be 20 episodes this year.

Leading up to the premiere, host Daryl Somers was reported to have said that MacDonald would be “involved on a semi-regular basis” but it seems the show will be without her for the time being.

The Daily Telegraph reported earlier that the 59-year-old was spotted yesterday at the wheel of her tractor spreading seed on her property west of Ipswich, looking like a woman in no hurry to pack a bag for Melbourne.

Livinia Nixon will return to the show tonight after the birth of her son earlier this year, joining John Blackman, Wilbur Wilde, Russell Gilbert and Red Symons in the line-up alongside host Daryl Somers.

Hey Hey It’s Saturday premieres tonight at 7.30pm on Nine.