Hollywood Q&A

Q: We’re wondering about some of our favorite shows from last season — “Survivor,” “A Place to Call Home” and “Victoria” on Masterpiece? Will they be back?

A: The answer is a yes and two very different maybes.

You have no need to wonder about “Survivor” for a while — Season 39 (yes, you read that right) debuts later this month, and CBS has already ponied up for a 40th season in 2020.

I’ll address the two maybes in order of likelihood.

“Victoria,” which stars Jenna Coleman (“Doctor Who”) and Tom Hughes (“The Game”) as Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, hasn’t officially been greenlit for a fourth season, but it’s been a huge hit for PBS, and for ITV in the U.K. — it’s produced jointly by the two networks. And there was no kind of resolution to the story at the end of Season 3. (Queen Victoria reigned for more than 63 years, so how could there be?) All this bodes well for a renewal.

The chances of more episodes of “A Place to Call Home” range from unlikely to basically impossible, depending on how you’ve been watching it so far. That series was produced in Australia and aired its sixth and final season there in 2018. It aired (in the traditional definition) in North America on PBS affiliates but stopped at Season 4. However, all six seasons are available to stream in North America via the Acorn.tv site (a Netflix competitor that specializes in imports from other English-speaking countries).

So if you’ve been watching on Acorn, you’re all caught up and out of luck. If you’ve watched it on PBS, there are two seasons you haven’t seen yet. However, PBS has made no mention of picking them up for air. That could mean they’re just waiting, or it could mean they’ve abandoned the show entirely. The fourth season debuted on PBS back in 2017, so the second scenario is more likely.

But that doesn’t mean you should give up hope. Both of the latter shows are international ones, and those tend to operate on a different — that is, slower and less predictable — schedule than American or Canadian ones. Years often pass between seasons, meaning that in the case of “A Place to Call Home,” PBS can take its time making a decision on those last two seasons.

As for “Victoria,” we’re coming up on a year since the previous season aired, and so normally we’d be hearing some rumblings of a next round, but it, too, has aired on a sporadic schedule — there was well over a year between Seasons 2 and 3, so the absence of news isn’t necessarily an indication of trouble.

Q: Is it true that Timothy Olyphant and Anderson Cooper are related?

A: Handsome seems to run in the extended Vanderbilt family. Former “Justified” star Timothy Olyphant and news talking-head Anderson Cooper are indeed semi-distant cousins (third cousins once removed, if anyone’s keeping that kind of score).

Both are descended from William Henry Vanderbilt and Maria Louisa Kissam — they were the great-great-greatgrandparents of Olyphant on his father’s side, and Cooper’s great-great-grandparents on his mother’s side. They were also the second generation of the megawealthy Vanderbilt family, which made its money in shipping and railroads in the mid-1800s. They were once the richest family in America, and they still command a hefty fortune.

Many of the Vanderbilt offspring have gravitated to showbiz. Cooper’s mother was noted author, designer and artist Gloria Vanderbilt, and another distant relative, James Vanderbilt, is a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He penned such hits as 2012’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” and this year’s Netflix film “Murder Mystery,” which itself was set in the world of the upper class.

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