ABCThis week, Keith Urban delivered his last livestream of 2020 with Urban Underground: Holiday Edition, a late 2020 installment of his quarantine-era series, Underground.
But to end 2020 with a bang, Keith surprised fans on social media with one last outtake from that performance on New Year’s Eve, posting an acoustic video of his new song “Polaroid” that was recorded at home during the Urban Underground virtual show.
“Happy new year to everyone!” Keith wrote. “Here’s an extra performance from the Urban Underground. Enjoy ‘Polaroid’!”
Keith first shared “Polaroid” back in April, on the heels of releasing his single “God Whispered Your Name.” Both songs are included on the track list of The Speed of Now Part 1, which the singer put out in full in September.
Happy New Year to everyone !! Here's an extra performance from the URBAN UNDERGROUND. Enjoy 'Polaroid' !
Rachel Luna/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — After participating in HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation last year, Maureen McCormick — aka Marcia Brady — is keeping the home improvements coming with her new show, Frozen in Time.
The Brady Bunch actress, along with designer Dan Vickery, will be giving home makeovers to properties that are stuck in the past, style-wise. The two will update and modernize the spaces, while still maintaining elements of the house’s history.
Frozen in Time debuts on January 4 on the Discovery+ streaming service.
In A Very Brady Renovation, McCormick and her five Brady Bunch siblings reunited for the first time in 15 years to renovate the iconic home that appeared in the show’s opening credits.
Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness is closing out 2020 by revealing a well-kept secret: He got married to his partner, Mark Peacock.
In an Instagram post reflecting on the year, JVN wrote, “I got married to my best friend & have a loving partner to continue building my life with.”
While he didn’t tag his husband in the post, he did share a photo seemingly from their wedding day.
In the comments section, his Queer Eye co-stars celebrated that the news was finally public.
“Yay!! That was a hard secret to keep!! love you Mark and Johnny!” wrote Bobby Berk.
Karamo Brown added, “Yay! We can finally celebrate it publicly!! So happy for you!!!!!! One of the most Beautiful couples in the world. Love you & Happy New year @jvn.”
“Happy New Year, Jackaaay! I love you,” Tan France wrote. “Here’s hoping next year is so much better, and that we can finally celebrate your marriage.”
Antoni Porowski was more focused on another accomplishment, though, writing, “wait you got a dog?!?!?!”
David McClister Parker McCollum’s celebrating New Year’s by giving fans the gift of new music.
“My new song ‘To Be Loved By You’ drops tonight at midnight!” he wrote on social media Thursday afternoon. “Mad love!”
“To Be Loved By You” will be familiar to some fans already, as Parker has performed the song at live shows in the past. He started testing it out on fans during concerts in late 2019, hinting that he was planning to record it for an upcoming album.
A year after fans first got a taste of Parker’s live version of the song, they’ll finally get to hear the studio version of “To Be Loved By You.” The singer also offered up the song’s cover art, featuring a photo of himself wearing shades and leaning up against a car.
The new song comes on the heels of some big career successes for Parker, who scored his first chart-topping hit at country radio this month with “Pretty Heart,” his debut single. That song also notched gold certification from the RIAA.
“Pretty Heart” comes off of a debut EP from Parker, Hollywood Gold, which arrived in October. Following its release, that project earned the title of highest-selling debut EP for 2020.
Netflix(LOS ANGELES) — Like many other industries, the COVID-19 pandemic brought TV production to a halt in March, wreaking havoc with the complicated business of show scheduling.
However, with millions of people locked down at home, 2020 is the year streaming came into its own. Starting in March when the pandemic began, shows like Netflix’s Tiger King became more than must-see TV: it and other hit shows were a way to connect with others from whom we were socially distanced.
The pandemic threw a monkey wrench into networks’ plans for the new fall season, forcing delays in show launches or the outright cancellations of shows that had been renewed, like Stumptown on ABC, GLOW on Netflix, and Comedy Central’s Drunk History.
David Boreanaz was directing a fall season episode of his CBS show SEAL Team back in March for the when he got news the show would be shut down. “It was very jarring for us,” he recalled to ABC Audio. “We had just finished we were shooting up on a mountaintop in Big Bear, a snow episode that I was directing, I had two days left and we came back that Thursday night and there was some rumor about it. And that’s when the NBA decided to stop its season.”
He added, “And we were all kind of like, ‘Oh, this is probably going to happen next week for us.’ We didn’t assume would happen so fast. And the next day we had planned to finish the two days that I had, and that was at the start of that Friday afterwards. And then by the end of the day, they just shut everything down.“
With so many people locked onto their couches with nothing to do, streaming services saw their subscription numbers skyrocket. So did the practice of mobile group-watching shows, and the social media buzz about hit series like Tiger King, The Boys and The Queen’s Gambit.
In fact, a survey taken in the summer of 2020 revealed that one in five people credited Netflix with saving their relationships when all the one-on-one time with your significant other got to be too much. A poll in May suggested the average person who was locked down was watching streaming content on their TV eight hours a day.
As the year went on and the 2020 TV season finally began, art began to imitate life. Talk shows resembled Zoom meetings, and some shows like Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest did remote-shot quarantine episodes. Saturday Night Live went remote for a while with SNL at Home, using video sketches to fill the show before returning to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, while the CBS drama All Rise created shows that used a Zoom-like interface to dispense law and order.
Productions also observed pandemic protocols. Not only were the casts and crews wearing masks on the set, characters in most shows were seen wearing them — everyone from the cops on Law & Order: SVU to the attorneys on Bull and were seen rocking masks, and acting behind Plexiglas barriers.
The new rules led to some interesting changes. Producers on The Bold and the Beautiful used mannequins for some scenes, and also hired living stunt smoochers in the form of the real-life spouses of the show’s stars, with help from costuming and camera angles.
Sometimes the precautions were not enough. As cases started to spike in the fall and testing cast and crew members for COVID-19 became commonplace, so too did halts in production. Shows from Days of Our Lives, to the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to the aforementioned Mythic Quest were halted over positive tests. The latter show had two separate outbreaks of the virus, with a dozen production staffers infected.
While the awards show’s ratings ranked at an all-time low, September’s 72nd Annual Emmy Awards became an exercise in innovation. Jimmy Kimmel played to an empty Staples Center as the host of the ‘Pandemmys,’ with cardboard cutouts standing in for the stars, except Jason Bateman, who appeared in person. All the nominees were outfitted with camera gear ahead of time at the homes or wherever they planned to be for the big night, should their name be called.
In the case of the PopTV show Schitt’s Creek, it was called a lot: the series swept all the comedy categories, a first for any show, let alone the upstart TV network. It also broke a record for the most-awarded comedy in a single year, when you factor in the Creative Arts awards it won.
Other historic wins included Euphoria‘s Zendaya, who at age 24 became the youngest actress ever to snag the Best Actress in a Drama trophy, and the second Black actress to nab the award, following Viola Davis’ 2015 win for How to Get Away with Murder. In fact, the majority of the acting awards went to Black actors — 10 in total, including Regina King, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Uzo Aduba and Eddie Murphy.
Although viewership numbers for streaming services are notoriously hard to pin down, here are the year’s most popular shows on various streaming services, based on data available
Netflix’s 2020 Top 10 according to Forbes: 1. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness 2. Locke & Key 3. Space Force 4. Outer Banks 5. Love Is Blind 6. The Queen’s Gambit 7. Never Have I Ever 8. Ratched 9. The Circle 10. Sweet Magnolias
Top 5 streaming shows on Disney+, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and CBS All Access in 2020, according to The Observer. Disney+ 1. The Mandalorian 2. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series 3. One Day at Disney Shorts 4. The World According to Jeff Goldblum 5. Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian
Amazon Prime: 1. The Boys 2. Upload 3. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel 4. The Expanse 5. Hunters
Hulu: 1. Little Fires Everywhere 2. The Handmaid’s Tale 3. Marvel’s Runaways 4. The Great 5. Future Man
Apple TV+ 1. Defending Jacob 2. The Morning Show 3. Ted Lasso 4. Servant 5. Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet
HBO Max 1. Raised by Wolves 2. Love Life 3. Search Party 4. Infinity Train 5. Close Enough
CBS All Access 1. Star Trek: Picard 2. Star Trek: Discovery 3. Tell Me a Story 4. The Good Fight 5. The Twilight Zone
Peacock 1. Brave New World 2. Connecting… 3. The Amber Ruffin Show 4. Wilmore 5. Lost Speedways
ABCThis week, Keith Urban delivered his last livestream of 2020 with Urban Underground: Holiday Edition, a late 2020 installment of his quarantine-era series, Underground. 
