diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index f7b0006..a5fdab8 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -137,6 +137,7 @@
 * Fix "Update shows on startup" (change update_shows_on_start = 0 in config.ini, restart SG, then update)
 * Fix Plex notifier, PY2 urllib2.urlopen has no `with` context manager and six.moves.urllib.request.urlopen does not provide
 * Fix hidden items on browse show page with new id system
+* Change ensure Kodi metadata is consistently a text string type
 
 
 ### 0.20.18 (2019-12-30 12:15:00 UTC)
diff --git a/lib/sg_helpers.py b/lib/sg_helpers.py
index 3617a7d..11ad797 100644
--- a/lib/sg_helpers.py
+++ b/lib/sg_helpers.py
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ import traceback
 import encodingKludge as ek
 from exceptions_helper import ex
 from _23 import filter_list, html_unescape, urlparse, urlunparse
-from six import iteritems, string_types
+from six import iteritems, string_types, text_type
 from lib.cachecontrol import CacheControl, caches
 from cfscrape import CloudflareScraper
 import requests
@@ -557,8 +557,12 @@ def write_file(filepath,  # type: AnyStr
                         else:
                             data.write(fh)
                 else:
-                    with ek.ek(io.FileIO, filepath, w_mode) as fh:
-                        fh.write(data)
+                    if isinstance(data, text_type):
+                        with ek.ek(io.open, filepath, w_mode, encoding='utf-8') as fh:
+                            fh.write(data)
+                    else:
+                        with ek.ek(io.FileIO, filepath, w_mode) as fh:
+                            fh.write(data)
 
             chmod_as_parent(filepath)
 
diff --git a/sickbeard/metadata/kodi.py b/sickbeard/metadata/kodi.py
index c307bd8..7a96390 100644
--- a/sickbeard/metadata/kodi.py
+++ b/sickbeard/metadata/kodi.py
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ import exceptions_helper
 from exceptions_helper import ex
 from lxml_etree import etree
 
-from _23 import map_iter
+from _23 import decode_str, map_iter
 from six import string_types
 
 # noinspection PyUnreachableCode
@@ -219,7 +219,7 @@ class KODIMetadata(generic.GenericMetadata):
         # output valid xml
         # data = etree.ElementTree(tv_node)
         # output non valid xml that Kodi accepts
-        data = etree.tostring(tv_node)
+        data = decode_str(etree.tostring(tv_node))
         parts = data.split('episodeguide')
         if 3 == len(parts):
             data = 'episodeguide'.join([parts[0], parts[1].replace('"', '"'), parts[2]])