Ending or Canceled TV Shows for the 2023-24 Season (Page 12 of 13)

Eavesdropping in Soho bars is rarely as much fun as it used to be. On Wednesday, for instance, your correspondent couldn’t help but overhear the following: “Mate, it’s carnage. Amazon said they don’t want it any more. They said, ‘Try theatrical.’ I mean, I don’t know who to ask. Apple isn’t buying. It’s going to take ages. Who knows if the guys will still be around?”

Ah yes, we are coming face-to-face with the hardest winter in TV memory after people in production companies spent much of 2022 smugly reassuring each other that the recession wouldn’t hit them as “it’s the golden age of content – everyone’s buying”.

In 2023, everyone’s cancelling. Among others, Netflix has laid to rest the mystery sci-fi series 1899, Dead End: Paranormal Park, Inside Job, The Chair and Uncoupled; HBO cancelled Doom Patrol and Titans; Disney+ axed The Mysterious Benedict Society, Reboot and Kindred.

And if all of those fall into the “what show was that again?” bracket, that partly explains the problem. Many of these shows, including 1899 (which topped the Netflix charts), The Chair and Inside Job, were canned after their first or second season – because there is simply too much content.

“I could list about five shows we’ve had to cancel this month. All good shows, and you wouldn’t have heard of any of them,” one Netflix insider tells me. “You need a blizzard of publicity and some heavy, early viewer-interest, or the show just sinks to the bottom of the pool and lies there. It’s a shame. There’s some great stuff still on there that no one has seen.”
HBO Max has cancelled the Gossip Girl reboot after two seasons

But we’ve also lost heavier hitters in Westworld, the Gossip Girl reboot, Snowpiercer, The Mosquito Coast, Pennyworth and Let the Right One In. Warner Brothers canned the Batgirl movie – aimed at a small screen release – after it had been filmed and was in post-production, putting it down as a tax write-off.

In the UK, the carnage is less dramatic, although there’s a higher-than-usual crop of shows coming to the end of the line – some through natural causes, others through poor performance. ITV’s Endeavour is being laid to rest by the creators after 10 years – a good innings, as they say – while Spitting Image is being dragged off BritBox after just two seasons. Bradley Walsh has taken the blame for ending The Larkins, saying he doesn’t have time to film a third season. Other shows such as Kate & Koji, The Good Karma Hospital, The Long Call, Gentleman Jack and The Time Traveller’s Wife have lost US backing.

Gentleman Jack, for instance, isn’t officially cancelled, but HBO has pulled funding, and that makes it unlikely that the BBC can afford to keep making the show. Creator Sally Wainwright has already said she wouldn’t want to continue without it having the same production values and would need to find another partner who would stream it globally. But the economics of the “golden age of television” are changing rapidly.
Gentleman Jack with Suranne Jones is not officially cancelled but HBO has pulled its funding

“Drama is becoming so expensive, especially in the UK,” explains Ed Waller, editorial director of trade bible C21 Media. “Talent costs are going through the roof – there’s a skills shortage behind the camera and European crews are reluctant to come to the UK post-Brexit. That means we just don’t have enough people to film good drama. The industry is launching training schemes across the business, but it’s going to take a couple of years to skill up. You can expect a strong move from scripted to unscripted shows – reality is back, basically. With the exception of Autumnwatch, obviously, which was canned at the start of the year.”

This is potentially a bigger problem than it seems. US streamers are facing a chill wind from Wall Street, while digital giants such as Facebook and YouTube, which were investing in original series a couple of years ago, have moved on. Disney has just cut 7,000 jobs and $3billion (£2.5billion) from its film and TV budget.

“British TV can’t really afford to make the drama it’s making without overseas money,” Waller says. “The BBC drama The Gold has money from the US streaming service Paramount+, which is showing it everywhere else in the world. A Spy Among Friends on ITV is a Sony production. The UK has done especially well out of the streaming wars.”
Jack Lowden as Kenneth Noye in BBC drama The Gold

Now that tap is shutting off, the question is: can we afford to make the kind of quality drama we’re used to? Broadcasters are officially sanguine – in part because not all streamers are affected. Disney+, HBO and Netflix are the hardest hit: financial pressures mean they’re commissioning fewer shows, while Amazon, Apple and Paramount are staying the course. And for upcoming shows such as Django, the spectacular Western on Sky Atlantic, European money from Canal+ is topping up the budget.

But the fiscal problems Hollywood is facing are only increasing. The Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild are all negotiating new contracts this year, as well as pushing for higher residuals – payments every time an episode is shown – that force up programme budgets. As a result, studios that have recently kept their content to their own streamers – Disney, for instance, holding Star Wars shows purely for Disney+ – are going back to licensing them to others.
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Warner, NBC, Disney and Sony are flogging licences for their surviving shows to drive up revenue, meaning they’ll be looking to flood Britain with their programming while pulling out of deals with UK drama producers.

In one sense, then, maybe all that’s going to happen is your favourite show moves from Disney+ to the BBC. Sweet deal; cancel your subscription; what’s not to like? But then there’s less space and less money for UK shows. And how easy would it be for Sally Wainwright to say she wants to wait 10 years for the final season of Happy Valley because you need time for good quality?

Time is money, and there’s a whole lot less around. If there’s a show you like, now’s the time to let the broadcasters know.

Mindhunter: Cancelled; Netflix Series Not Returning for Season Three Says David Fincher

Mindhunter will not be returning for a third season on Netflix. This news comes from the man behind the series – director David Fincher. Jonathan Groff (above), Holt McCallany, Anna Torv, Joe Tuttle, Albert Jones, Stacey Roca, Michael Cerveris, Lauren Glazier, and Sierra McClain star in the psychological crime thriller.

Based on the memoir of FBI agent John Douglas,  the story revolves around a pair of FBI Agents (Groff and McCallany) and a psychologist (Torv) who operate the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. They launch a project to interview imprisoned serial killers in hopes of using that knowledge to catch others.

Season two arrived on Netflix in August 2019, and the cast was released from their contracts. Fincher confirmed the end of the series in an interview, per TV Line:

    “I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for Season 3]. I don’t blame them; they took risks to get the show off the ground… It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness. The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways.”

In a previous interview, there was still hope the series would return with new episodes at some point.

‘South Side’ Canceled By HBO Max

HBO Max declined to pick up a fourth season of South Side, the comedy from Bashir Salahuddin, Diallo Riddle and Sultan Salahuddin.

South Side, which debuted on Comedy Central before moving to HBO Max for Season 2 in November 2021, follows two friends who just graduated from community college and are ready to take over the world, but until they do, they’re stuck working at Rent-T-Own. Shot on location in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, the show offers an authentic look into what life on the South Side is all about.

Season 3 debuted on the streamer in December.

“While HBO Max will not be moving forward with a fourth season of South Side, we are so proud of the rich world Bashir Salahuddin, Diallo Riddle and Sultan Salahuddin created,” said an HBO Max spokesperson. “We thank them and Michael Blieden, Tony Hernandez, the supremely talented cast and crew and our partners at MTV Entertainment Studios. For three seasons, this beloved series balanced cutting, hyperlocal social commentary about life on the South Side of Chicago with silly, sometimes zany humor. The result was a wholly unique, ambitious, and fearless comedy that could speak to everyone living the American dream.”

Life on Mars: UK Creators Announce Lazarus Sequel Series Not Happening

Life on Mars will not have another sequel series after all. The creators of the UK series have announced that the planned spin-off, titled Lazarus, will not be happening, per Deadline.

The original Life on Mars series aired for two seasons on BBC One between 2006 and 2007. Starring John Simm, Philip Glenister, Liz White, Dean Andrews, and Marshall Lancaster, the sci-fi series follows a cop (Simm) from 2006 who finds himself thrown back in time to 1970s Manchester.

A spin-off series titled Ashes to Ashes, featuring Keeley Hawes as a police officer who is shot in 2008 and wakes up in 1981, ran for three seasons in the UK. ABC ran its own version of Life on Mars starring Jason O’Mara and Harvey Keitel. It was cancelled after one season but viewers still got an ending, one that differed from the UK series.

Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham announced plans for the Lazarus series in 2020. Set in Manchester and London during the 1970s and 1980s, the series was expected to run for four or five episodes. Simm and Glenister would have reprised their roles from the original series.

    It is with a heavy heart that the creators of #LifeOnMars have confirmed that the highly anticipated revival show, #Lazarus, will no longer be moving forward.

    Many thanks to Matthew Graham & Ashley Pharoah for these past 3 years in your efforts to reunite Sam Tyler & Gene Hunt https://t.co/qIQp4d0pF5 pic.twitter.com/jYnOBccyhk

    — … #Lazarus (@LifeOnMars_tv) June 3, 2023

Viewers could still see what the creators of the Lazarus series, Graham and Ashley Pharoah, had planned for the sequel. Pharoah teased the fans could see the content pop up in another format at some point.

    Really disappointing news but we gave it a proper crack. We’re still thinking of a way to either share the script with you or bring it out in another form. Until then…

    Pub?

    — Ashley Pharoah (@AJPharoah) June 3, 2023

The Winchesters: Season Two Efforts Failed Due to Bad Timing, According to Jensen Ackles

The Winchesters has failed to find a new home. Efforts to find an outlet to take on season two of the Supernatural spin-off series were unsuccessful. The CW cancelled the series last month.

Starring Meg Donnelly, Drake Rodger, Jonathan ”JoJo” Fleites, Nida Khurshid, Demetria McKinney, Bianca Kajlich, and Jensen Ackles (as narrator), the series follows the story of how John and Mary Winchester met, fell in love, and searched for their fathers while fighting monsters together.

Ackles, also one of the series’ executive producers, confirmed the news on social media. After the series ‘ cancellation, the Supernatural star rallied fan support for a second season but changes in the industry and the ongoing writers strike didn’t help those efforts.

Ackles wrote, “To all of you who watched, followed, and supported this story, THANK YOU. And to all those who brought this show to life…I couldn’t be more proud of what we all did together. But as they say…timing is everything. With a massive Network shift coupled with an industry strike…welp…that’s some unfortunate timing. Sleep well dear @WinchestersOnCW…until we meet again. Somewhere down the road.”

it was a natirual ending to the series. Without Peter it was not worth the bother as it was that relation ship that fueled the series.