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Fox’s new jungle reality competition series is hosted by Hannah Simone — who you probably recognise, but where from? Hannah is a former model and you’ve most likely seen her in New Girl on Fox, on which she plays Cecilia ‘Cece’ Parekh. But the beauty, from Vancouver, Canada, has lots of strings to her bow. Her first TV role was on Kevin Hill all the way back in 2005, and she then went on to have appearances in Kojak, Beautiful People, H+, 1600 Penn, and Hot Package. Hannah has also had roles on the big screen in Old Boy, Miss India...read more...

Oh, Vin Diesel. Your legion of gushing fans always swoon whenever you post something on your official Facebook page. The busy actor’s latest contribution to the world of social media suggests that Ang Lee might be the person who directs the upcoming big screen adaptation of “Kojak.” As long as Diesel is sucking on a lollipop, chances are his fan’s won’t care who steps behind the camera for the project. Of course, I could be wrong. When a curious fan asked the actor which filmmaker he’d love to work with at some point in the not-too-distant future, Diesel offered up the following response. It’s not a confirmation of Lee’s involvement, mind you, but it’s worth mentioning just in case. “Kojak… New York… Ang Lee,” Diesel posted. You tease! Although Ving Rhames tried his best to keep the character alive on the small screen...

Ving Rhames is to play a guest role on Hawaii Five-0. The Pulp Fiction actor will appear in the upcoming third season, the official CBS Twitter has announced. The post reads: "H50 Casting News! Ving Rhames is going toe-to-toe with Danno (Scott Caan) this fall & it's going to get bloody..." 53-year-old Rhames previously starred in short-lived Starz drama Gravity and also played the title role in a 2005 Kojak reboot, but is best known for his film credits, including the Mission: Impossible movie franchise and 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake. He is also attached to forthcoming TNT medical (more)...

Exclusive: Ving Rhames is set to star opposite Alfred Molina is David E. Kelley’s TNT medical drama pilot Chelsea General. Based on CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta’s upcoming novel Monday Mornings, the project follows the lives of five surgeons as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings. It uses as a backdrop the hospital’s Monday Morbidity and Mortality conference, considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine, where doctors gather for a confidential review of complications and errors in patient care. Rhames, who was pursued for multiple pilots this season, will play a physically imposing former professional football player who now is the most celebrated trauma chief in the country. In addition to Rhames and Molina, the cast of the project includes Bill Irwin, Jamie Bamber and Jennifer Finnigan. Kelley and Gupta, who is a practicing neurosurgeon, are...

We recently learned that Pineapple Express and Your Highness director David Gordon Green would write and direct a new pilot called Black Jack for Comedy Central. At the time, the official order for the pilot was contingent on who would be cast in the lead role, but now Deadline reports Ving Rhames has taken the part and that clause has been lifted. The new comedy series will follow Rhames as the title character who after 20 years as the most kick-ass special ops agent the Us government has had on its payroll, finally goes too far and is de-commissioned, forcing him to live his life like the rest of us. This isn't the first time Rhames has led a television series after his turn as Kojak in the series remake back in 2005. Personally, I like him as a character actor, but in Green's hand, this new series could turn out to be just fine.

Even if you don't know you know actor Ving Rhames, you totally do. He played the menacing Marcellus Wallace, husband of Uma Thurman's coked-out Mia, in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and also appeared in Mission Impossible as well as the 2005 USA remake of Kojak. Going back a bit, he starred in HBO's 1997 Don King biopic Only In America.

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Exclusive: Ving Rhames has been tapped to play the title character in Comedy Central's pilot Black Jack, lifting the contingency on the project. The single-camera comedy, directed and executive produced by Pineapple Express helmer David Gordon Green, hails from Rough House, Green's production company with Danny McBride, Jody Hill and Matt Reilly. Written by Michael Starrbury, it centers on Black Jack (Rhames) who, after 20 years as the most kick-ass special ops agent the Us government has had on its payroll, finally goes too far and is de-commissioned. Comedy Central picked up the pilot last month contingent on finding the right actor for the lead. Green, Starrbury, McBride, Hill and Reilly are exec producing. This is the second time Rhames, repped by Innovative and Kramer Management, would play the title role in a series, following his starring turn on USA's Kojak remake in 2005. He also played the title character in...

NEW YORK -- MySpace launched its PrimeTime channel Wednesday, a hub that will integrate Hulu content with offerings from MySpace TV.

The page will present streaming episodes and movies that also are available on the stand-alone site for Hulu, the joint online video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., the parent company of MySpace. Smaller clips of the shows also will be available.

Programming on PrimeTime includes such Fox and NBC series as 24, Heroes and The Office; along with older shows no longer on the air such as Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kojak; and movies from studios owned by News Corp. and NBC Uni like Fox Searchlight's Sideways and Fox's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

MySpace TV content also will be available on PrimeTime, including Quarterlife, Roommates, Prom Queen and Lonelygirl15.

New shows, clips and films will be added regularly to the page.

Hulu also is distributed through Time Warner's AOL, Microsoft's MSN, Comcast and Yahoo. The site launched in private beta at the end of October.

Fox has pacted with producer Bob Cooper for a drama project inspired by the story of Cathy Lanier, the newly appointed chief of police of Washington.

Tony Piccirillo (USA's Kojak) is writing the untitled project for Cooper's Landscape Entertainment and Fox TV Studio.

Lanier, a 39-year-old white single mother who dropped out of high school after getting pregnant at 14, became D.C.'s first female police chief and one of the youngest heads of the 3,800-member department dominated by black male officers. In addition to dealing with the city's high crime rate, Lanier also has to deal with about 100 other law enforcement agencies operating in D.C.

"Here's a white woman in a man's world and an African-American world, working with agency after agency in a complicated jurisdiction like Washington, D.C., and she's a single mom," Cooper said. "This seemed like a rich area to look at."

Cooper was a former HBO Pictures, TriStar and DreamWorks topper before segueing into producing through Landscape.

LONDON -- ITV4, the new digital commercial channel aimed at young male viewers, attracted an audience that peaked at 1.2 million viewers with its debut Tuesday, according to overnight ratings from the Broadcasters Audience Research Bureau. The channel, which promises a mix of sports, movies and U.S. series, aired live soccer followed by the debut of the Ving Rhames-starring Kojak on its first night. Audiences peaked at 1.2 million during the soccer match between the British club Chelsea and Spain's Real Batis, with the match drawing an average of 633,000 viewers. Rhames' reprisal of the classic Telly Savalas role, which aired at 10 p.m., attracted 285,000 viewers.

The return of Desperate Housewives and the premiere of the drama Grey's Anatomy rocketed ABC back to the top of the Nielsen rankings Sunday. Meanwhile, the premiere of the new-model Kojak looked sharp for USA Network on Friday. With its first original episode in five weeks, Housewives ruled Sunday, drawing 24 million viewers and a 10.7 rating/24 share in the adults 18-49 demographic, according to preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research. At 10 p.m., Grey's Anatomy (16.3 million, 7.2/18), a new ensemble drama about a group of female medical residents, lost ground from its Housewives lead-in but still held on to a larger chunk of that audience than the previous occupant of the time slot, Boston Legal. ABC also was rock solid in the 8 p.m. hour with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (16.2 million, 6.5/16). NBC had another see-saw performance from boxing competition series The Contender (7.1 million, 3.2/8), which posted modest overall numbers but took a leap at the half-hour mark (from 6.2 million, 2.8/7 in its first half-hour to 8 million, 3.6/9 from 8:30-9 p.m.) as the combatants stepped into the ring. A special bonus episode of Contender (4.3 million, 1.6/5) didn't do much for NBC in the 7 p.m. hour.

The new USA Network series Kojak could test the track record of one of NBC Universal's most popular global exports: TV detective shows. One of the reasons USA brass put Kojak into production is because the gumshoe genre has been a hot seller in the overseas markets, where many other memorable TV sleuths licensed by Universal -- Columbo, Magnum, P.I. and the original Kojak -- continue to air everywhere from Sweden to Australia decades after their original runs. The new Kojak, which premiered domestically Friday, is faithful enough to the character originated in 1973 by actor Telly Savalas to copy his signature stylings: the lollipop and bald head. But the series not only dispenses with his famous catchphrase, "Who loves ya, baby," but rids itself of his Greek identity, too. A black actor, Ving Rhames, assumes the title role.

The new USA Network series Kojak could test the track record of one of NBC Universal's most popular global exports: TV detective shows. One of the reasons USA brass put Kojak into production is because the gumshoe genre has been a hot seller in the overseas markets, where many other memorable TV sleuths licensed by Universal -- Columbo, Magnum, P.I. and the original Kojak -- continue to air everywhere from Sweden to Australia decades after their original runs. The new Kojak, which premiered domestically Friday, is faithful enough to the character originated in 1973 by actor Telly Savalas to copy his signature stylings: the lollipop and bald head. But the series not only dispenses with his famous catchphrase, "Who loves ya, baby," but rids itself of his Greek identity, too. A black actor, Ving Rhames, assumes the title role.