By Annette Sharp
Copyright news
The program, created by a Dutch production company and based on the Russian party game Mafia which pits mafia informers against trusting civilians in a remote manor house, struggled to find an audience upon its premier in 2022.
The show wallowed under 300,000 viewers a night (metro combined markets) on all but one occasion and failed to make the top 20 programs on six of a dozen outings.
Despite this, Ten brought the series back the following year with a few celebrities thrown into the pool of unknown contestants only to see the ratings slip further as too did the episode count.
With Ten’s local chief Beverley McGarvey under renewed pressure to turn the company
around following the recent completion of Ten’s merger between international parent company Paramount Global and Skydance, she will be hoping for third time lucky with the reboot.
The program is set to get a new host following the departure of former host Rodger Corser earlier this year to Nine where he now hosts The Floor.
This column hears celebrities will again feature in the third season of The Traitors.
Marsh, who has kept herself busy promoting a podcast since series three of Real Housewives of Sydney (RHOS) wrapped last year, will no doubt be hoping to find more harmony on the set of Ten’s Traitors than was to be found on Foxtel’s RHOS.
Despite the emotional scars, she last week toyed publicly with the idea of returning for a fourth season on her social media account.
“Would you go back?” she mused in a post in which she called the program “toxic”. “I need to know if I’m crazy for saying never again …”
This column suspects hell will freeze over before Marsh, her Housewife bestie Nicole Gazal O’Neil and frenemy Terry Biviano are reunited in front of cameras; however the return of its Melbourne counterpart continues to firm.
McGARVEY’S NEW BOSS TO PUT STAMP ON TEN
The return of The Traitors amply demonstrates the crisis Ten’s president Beverley McGarvey finds herself in as she searches for local content to keep Ten from flatlining.
Following the completion of the $12 billion Paramount Global/Skydance merger, McGarvey has acquired a new boss.
He is Brooklyn-born Kevin McLellan, formerly of MTV, HBO, Sony Pictures, Comcast and NBC Universal.
MacLellan was appointed Paramount’s international and global content distribution president last month with his remit including Ten in Australia and Channel 5 in the UK.
Showing what a cheerleader she can be, McGarvey enthusiastically told industry publication Mumbrella her new boss was “fantastic” this month.
This came as Ten confirmed a reshuffle of its executive ranks and the departures of content and programming boss Dan Monaghan and corporate communications boss Bronwyn Fardon.
Days later came the shock news McGarvey’s UK counterpart, Sarah Rose at Channel 5 who also answers to MacLellan, was also departing the business to head up charitable organisation The Royal Foundation.
That news coincided with MacLellan’s visit to the UK.
MacLellan is regarded as an industry supremo. He was one of the guns who helped NBC-Universal’s parent company Comcast acquire European pay-TV company Sky in 2018 for an extraordinary $55 billion.
It’s easy to see why executives at Ten are anxious to learn what MacLellan has in store for the network which has had a dismal year with the cancellation of Neighbours, The Project, and the failure of its prime time replacement show 10 News+.
SINGO HORSES AROUND
In news that could put Erin Molan’s nose out of joint, John Singleton has taken his relationship with his decorator Michelle Leslie to the next level – and given her a half-share in a racehorse.
A year after the businessman’s gift to Molan sparked wild but inaccurate engagement speculation, Singleton has shown his admiration for Leslie by gifting her a share in a racehorse trained by legendary trainer Gai Waterhouse.
The four-year-old mare out of Zoustar was bought for $800k and gifted to Leslie last year.
The horse has been named for Leslie’s daughter Zsa Zsa.
Leslie’s baby was born two years ago after the ex-model retired to a series of homes owned by Singleton following the break-up of the 44-year-old’s relationship with Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns. Singleton had hired Leslie to renovate the homes.
While Leslie has previously refused this column’s request to identify her baby’s father, we were this month able to confirm the baby’s father is Brazilian—Australian cinematographer Thomaz Labanca.
The racehorse Zsa Zsa has had three starts to date, the best of which saw her run third in country Victoria in January, netting a prize of $6750.
Leslie’s half share of that might buy her a nice handbag.
During his long years in racing, Singleton has named many horses for family and friends.
Among them Jack Attack for his son, Sunshine Sally for his daughter, Jonny the Kid for his two-year-old grandson and Dear Demi for the daughter of former love Yvette Hartman.
Others honoured by the tradition include his EA who has two horses named for her, Ask Di and Call Di, Mrs Maree for Clarry Connors’ wife, Gerringong for legendary Parramatta Eels footballers Mick Cronin and Peter Wynne and the yet-to-start Erin Jo for Molan.
TRAIN WRECK FOR SYDNEY’S AFFLUENT
Bryant Stokes, youngest son and heir of billionaire Kerry Stokes, is said to be fleeing Sydney’s affluent Woollahra ahead of the state government’s plans to open a railway station metres from his front door.
Bryant and his wife Dominique this week snapped up Darlinghurst property Iona, former home of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, to escape the planned rezoning of their neighbourhood and the construction of an estimated 10,000 new high density homes, sources say.
The couple are said to have purchased the $37.5 million historic seven-bedroom Iona earlier in the week in a phone auction.
The purchase comes a month after the state government confirmed it was set to proceed with the restoration of the abandoned Woollahra railway station more than a century after the groundwork was laid.
Construction is expected to begin in 2027 and property speculators claim the rezoning will see real estate in the catchment area potentially quadruple in price as homes make way for multi-storey apartment blocks.
It’s anticipated Stokes, a property developer, will now redevelop the Edgecliff Road plot he and his wife bought in 2014 for $3.8 million.
A year earlier Stokes had stepped down from the board of his father’s investment vehicle and media company Seven Group Holdings to concentrate on his own property development ambitions, making way for his older brother Ryan to succeed their father in the family business.
Stokes is expected to lead an exodus of well-heeled Woollahra locals who are making plans to quit the gentrified suburb.
The railway station, located between Edgecliff and Bondi Junction stations, occupies a site bounded by Edgecliff and Wallaroy Roads and Weeroona and Roslyndale Avenues.
Some of Sydney’s most influential residents live in the area which has long boasted some of Sydney’s oldest residential streets and most historic homes.
Among them Wentworth MP Allegra Spender, the daughter of fashion designer Carla Zampatti who moved into her mother’s home on Edgecliff Road following Zampatti’s death.
The home is up the road from the former home of fashionista Camilla Franks.
Transfield Holdings boss Luca Belgiorno-Nettis and his film producer wife Anita are around the corner on leafy Roslyndale Avenue, as is Eurobodalla dairy farmer and ice-creamery merchant Sandra McCuaig.
Entertainment industry promoter and producer Paul Dainty previously lived on the street as did recently deceased entrepreneur Sam Gazal who named his company Roslyndale after the street.
Around the corner in Wallaroy Road, at one time the address of Hugh Jackman and ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness, is entrepreneur Tim Holmes a Court and his wife Lavaza importing heiress Amanda Valmorbida; also proprietor of The London Hotel Natasha Stanley and her restaurateur husband Kingsley Smith.
Respected retired Supreme Court judge and author Michael Pembroke and wife Gillian sold earlier this year though perhaps not, or so we gather, disgraced Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld whose Wallaroy home was memorably raided by police in 2006.
NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman is expected to be among those most impacted with homes in Speakman’s Weeroona Avenue backing directly onto the railway line.
