HOLLYWOOD Q&A

Q: Will Fox’s “Lucifer” be returning to TV?

A: Sort of, but it’s not Fox’s anymore.

Fox canceled “Lucifer” back in May after its third season. Its ratings had dropped consistently year over year, and so it didn’t seem like a great candidate for rescue by another channel, but Netflix surprised everyone by doing just that a month later. However, with Netflix being a streaming service, the show won’t be back “on TV” exactly.

The most specific return date Netflix has offered is “early 2019,” but we do know that filming ended in early December, so the wait shouldn’t be too long.

Though its ratings made this resurrection unlikely, other elements of the show helped it along. A big piece of that is the subject matter: supernatural shows (such as this one, which is about the devil quitting his job as lord of the underworld to help the police solve crimes in Los Angeles) tend to gather passionate fan bases who hustle pretty hard on their show’s behalf. That was the case here, as the fan campaign to bring the show back was huge.

However, there’s also a reason why the show’s American ratings simply didn’t matter to Netflix. Unlike the Fox network, Netflix is a global platform, and “Lucifer” has a pretty solid following outside the U.S.

Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vicepresident of original series, said she rescued the show partly because it “has really resonated

with audiences in parts of the world where we licensed it, so we felt it was important to help that show continue for those fans.”

Q: What has happened to Michaela Pereira on HLN? Will she be coming back?

A: TV news hosting is a job, too, and like so many people with other (admittedly more common) jobs, Michaela Pereira was laid off. As things stand, Pereira and her show, cleverly named “MichaeLA,” will not be coming back.

HLN went through a major restructuring process in the fall, cutting back on live news in favor of prerecorded “long-form programs.”

“In today’s news environment, every network has to focus on its strengths,” network boss Ken Jautz said at the time. “To ensure HLN’s growth, we will shift some of our resources from live to longform programming and produce our live shows in as streamlined a manner as possible.”

Streamlining, in this case, meant extending the hours of some other live-news shows and laying off three well-known faces: Pereira, Ashleigh Banfield and Carol Costello.

Pereira handled it like the professional she is, continuing her show for another 10 days after the announcement. And her big retrospective moment in the final episode, which aired Oct. 26, wasn’t about her at all — she aired clips of the guests she had on her show over the years.

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