What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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December 15 - 21, 2019 WHATS UP! T5 BY MICHELLE ROSE TV Media 'Nine-Nine' lives: It's the show that won't die, and thank goodness! Because "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" is a comedic gem that's beloved by fans and evi- dently by its network, too. Its seventh season has yet to air — it will premiere Feb. 6, 2020 — but NBC has gone ahead and renewed the cop comedy for an eighth season. So we'll be see- ing a lot more of Detective Jack Peralta (Andy Samberg, "Satur- day Night Live"), Officer Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero, "One Life to Live"), Capt. Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher, "The Gambler," 2014) and the whole Nine-Nine crew. This is a big deal when you consider that Fox had canceled the show last year. The network didn't own the series and was paying a license fee of around $1.9 million per episode, and it proved to be too much for a low- rated series. But just 32 hours later, the series' creators and stars took to Twitter to an- nounce that NBC had swooped in to resurrect the series, which is produced and distributed by sister studio Universal TV. And fans were treated to a sixth sea- son earlier this year. This comeback kid might not be the top performer, according to live-plus-same-day broadcast ratings, but those metrics seem archaic in this age of streaming and delayed viewing (that's why ABC recently joined Fox in switching to live-plus-three-to- seven-day viewership numbers instead). But NBC/Hulu has a huge dig- ital hit on its hands with "Brook- lyn Nine-Nine." When you look at ratings on all platforms over a 35-day period, the series' three- plus million viewership jumps up to about 7.4 million per epi- sode. It's a social media darling, too, with Nielsen recording a to- tal of nine million interactions on Twitter, Facebook and Insta- gram last season. So while it might not be a TV hit in the traditional sense, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" is a big hit nonetheless. And, happily, the award-winning series isn't going away anytime soon. To 'Valhalla': Good news and bad news for fans of History's flagship series, "Vikings": a se- quel will continue the story after the series wraps in 2020, but it will be a Netflix exclusive. "Vikings: Valhalla" will jump ahead some 100 years after the "Vikings" series finale to focus on some of the most famous Norse explorers in history, and a famous descendent, too. It's being billed as a dramatization of the adventures of Leif Erik- son, the first known European to set foot on the North Ameri- can continent; of Freydís Eiríksdóttir, who, as the name implies, was Erik the Red's daughter; of Harald Harada, King of Norway, who lay claim to the Danish throne then at- tempted an invasion of England in 1066; and of William the Conqueror, himself a Viking descendent, who became the first Norman King of England. Clearly, it's the Viking Age at its zenith — and its end. Speaking of end, "Vikings" will have run for a total of 89 epi- sodes by the time it wraps in 2020. News of its final season broke in January and it wasn't a complete shock, given the finite nature of any series based on ac- tual historical events and figures — like former lead character Ragnar Lothbrook (Travis Fim- mel, "Dreamland," 2019), whose death in the Icelandic Sagas meant an early end in the tele- vised saga, too. Holly Hunter on NBC: Her memorable performance as con- niving Rhea Jerrell on "Succes- sion" is still fresh in the minds of many (including yours truly), but look for Holly Hunter to flex her comedy muscles in an up- coming project. The award-winning actress — she won an Oscar for 1994's "The Piano" — is set to star opposite Ted Danson ("The Good Place") in a yet-untitled (but informally dubbed "The Mayor") NBC comedy from "30 Rock" creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Danson will play the lead character, a wealthy business- man who runs for mayor of Los Angeles on a dubious platform then unexpectedly wins. As for Hunter, she'll play a do-gooder councilwoman who "makes no secret of her disdain for the newly elected Mayor Bremer, whom she considers unquali- fied, sexist, and too tall to be trusted." (Fun fact: At six-foot- two, Danson is a full foot taller than his newest co-star, who measures five-foot-two). "Saturday Night Live" veteran Bobby Moynihan has also signed on to play Jayden, the newly elected mayor's interim director of communications. This series is still a work in progress, and in a best-case sce- nario you might see it in NBC's 2020-21 lineup. In the meantime, Hunter's next role will be that of acting attorney general Sally Yates in the CBS Studios limited- event series, "A Higher Loyalty," which is based on former FBI di- rector James Comey's bestsell- ing book. In addition to Hunter and lead actor Jeff Daniels ("The Newsroom") as Comey, the se- ries has been seemingly adding big names to its cast each week, with the latest being Peter Coy- ote ("Patch Adams," 1998) as Robert Mueller. ARTISANAL BEADS CARVING COLLAGE CRAYONS CROCHET DARNING EMBOSS ENGRAVE ETCH FELT GLITTER GLUE GUN HANDI - CRAFT HOBBY INK JEWELRY MARKERS ORIGAMI PAINT PAPER PASTE PENS POTTERY QUILLING SOAPMAK - ING STAINED GLASS TAPE UTILITY KNIFE WEAVING WICKER YARN Let's Get Crafty Andy Samberg and Melissa Fumero star in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" WORD SEARCH STARS ON SCREEN Solution on page T23