VH1 Rolls Out New Series Slate

Pop-culture/music channel VH1 Thursday released a slate of original-series premieres and renewals set to air next year.

The network will give actress Brigitte Nielsen and rapper Flavor Flav their own reality series, Strange Love, premiering in January. The odd couple is part of the current cast of the network’s popular The Surreal Life series, which itself will return to VH1 for a fourth season in January, according to the network.

Supermodel Jerry Hall, former wife of rock legend Mick Jagger, will get her choice of 15 bachelors as part of a new reality series, Kept, set to debut in March, while veteran music artists will get a new lease on their careers in new series Remaking, bowing in January.

Other new skeins scheduled to debut over the next few months include My Coolest Years, in which artists relive their high-school experiences; Celebrity Fit Club, where famous personalities compete to see who can lose the most weight; Motormouth, a hidden-camera reality series; and Redlight-Greenlight, a weekly series that reviews trends in movies, music and TV.

On the specials front, the network will air in December (Inside) Out: The Rise of Velvet Revolver, which follows the creation of the popular rock band; and VH1 News Presents: Politics: A Pop Culture History, which examines pop culture’s influence on the political arena.

R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.