Anne Robinson is making her TV return three years after leaving Countdown.
The former Weakest Link icon replaced Nick Hewer on Countdown in 2021 but left after just one year, and now he’s primed for a comeback on Channel 5.
She’ll be at the helm of the broadcaster’s new social experience show The Sentence: You Be The Judge.
The innovative new programme will feature four real-life hearings recreated in painstaking detail as participants choose what sentence a convicted criminal should get.
Then, they’ll find out how the presiding judge in each case actually reacted at the time.
There will be groups judging alongside the contestants, made up of retired police officers, retired judges, former inmates and relatives of crime victims.
In a statement, Anne said: ‘Why is the sentencing of criminals so widely inconsistent?
‘Why does a protester who climbs up a bridge to stop the traffic spend more time in prison than someone who punches an innocent man who dies as a result?
‘This programme tells a jaw dropping story. The government needs to watch it.’
When Anne first joined Countdown, she said she was ‘beyond thrilled’ to be taking centre stage on such a ‘historic’ show.
‘I am particularly excited to be working alongside the show’s two other formidable women.
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‘Worryingly, Susie and Rachel are not only very smart but younger, prettier and thinner than me. Sadly, there’s no time for another face lift so I’ll have make do with this old one,’ she added at the time.
‘I am a crossword nut so the Countdown’s conundrums I can make sense of. But the adding up and taking away – I can’t go much further than working out the fee once my agent takes his cut.’
However, she later left the show with little fanfare amid rumours of a feud with co-stars Rachel Riley and Susie Dent.
She branded those claims as ‘nonsense’, and insisted they didn’t really ‘have time to talk to each other’ because of the hectic nature of filming.
‘Between shows we have a ten-minute turn around to get changed. We can go for almost a whole run without doing more than waving to each other from the end of a corridor,’ she told the Mail.
‘I’m not saying I would go on holiday with Rachel Riley, but she is brilliant. Absolutely honestly, I do admire her – she is really, really good at what she does, as is Susie Dent.
“Look, Rachel has just come back from having a baby and she is standing throughout and faultless, whereas I get to sit down.’
And Anne insisted she left Countdown to spent more time with her family after staying ‘longer than she signed up for’.
‘I’ve had a blast hosting this wonderful show,’ she said in a statement. ‘But I have grandchildren, a large garden and a home in New York, all deserving more of my attention.’
Meanwhile, Rachel later admitted she preferred having Colin Murray in the hot seat after he replaced Anne.
‘Anne was a lot more headmistress style and that suits some people, and some people enjoyed it. I don’t think it’s any secret that I am enjoying working with Colin a lot more,’ she told the Mail.
‘She’s been in the industry a long time and she knows what she wants so she decided to leave and good luck to her, but Countdown is not really about us.
‘Any of us could go and as long as the letters and numbers are still there… then that’s what the viewers want.
‘I am not under any illusion that people watch it for me… they watch it because they like to play the game so long may that continue.’
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