Saturday 17 November 2012

ABC cancel 666 PARK AVENUE and LAST RESORT

Saturday 17 November 2012

Unsurprisingly, ABC's brand new dramas 666 Park Avenue (the supernatural soap about a haunted hotel) and Last Resort (the action-thriller about a mutinous submarine crew) have been cancelled. ABC have decided not to order more episodes, in the wake of low ratings. Last Resort's dropped from 9.31m viewers to 5.68 after seven episodes; 666 Park Avenue started with 6.90m but its seventh episode could only manage 3.90m.

Last Resort never had much of a chance in the notoriously difficult Thursday 8pm timeslot (up against The Big Bang Theory, Two & A Half Men and football), and it's also been noted that the show perhaps didn't sit well among the channel's female-skewing schedule. However, its demise means creator Shawn Ryan (no stranger to early cancellations post-Terriers and Chicago Code) can focus his attention on the Beverly Hills Cop TV series he's adapting for CBS.

ABC have ordered full seasons of the drama Nashville and sci-fi comedy The Neighbors (incidentally one of the worst sitcoms I've ever seen, so of course it's somehow successful).

What do you make of this news? Was it inevitable those shows wouldn't connect with viewers? Might it be perfectly okay for Last Resort to conclude its story after 13 episodes, given how it remains difficult to imagine it stretching the concept out over multiple years? Was 666 Park Avenue not scary enough, or did audiences just not care about the actors involved?

[source: Deadline]