It’s Friday night, so let’s check the loose grave where ABC dumps its newly canceled shows
Alaska Daily, The Company You Keep, and Big Sky have all been killed off ahead of next week's upfront presentations
Aux News ABC
It’s Friday night, that special time of the week where the networks feel most comfortable—like as unto a god—with the dark work of offing their struggling, under-performing, or just “too expensive” television shows. And so it’s time for us to do our own due dilligence, and poke a stick into the loose grave where the bodies get dumped, to see whether—oh, yeah, woof, ABC killed a lot of TV shows tonight, huh?
Specifically: THR reports that the Disney-owned network has brought a swift, bloody end to three of its series this evening: Alaska Daily, Big Sky, and The Company You Keep. Alaska Daily and The Company You Keep were both first-season offerings; Big Sky wrapped up its third season back in January.
Alright, let’s identify these suckers for their next of kin:
Alaska Daily was created by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy, and is probably most likely to be filed, in the minds of those who didn’t watch it, as “That hour-long drama that Hilary Swank is on.” Swank starred in the show as a former New York reporter who tries to rebuild her life in Anchorage, working with fellow journalists played by Jeff Perry, Grace Dove, Meredith Holzman, Matt Malloy, Pablo Castelblanco, Ami Park, and Craig Frank to investigate stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women. The show aired its series finale on March 30.
The Company You Keep ran with that most classic of TV premises, the star-crossed lovers who are a con-man and a CIA agent, respectively. TV mainstay Milo Ventimiglia was said-con-man, who finds himself in a relationship with Catherine Haena Kim’s international spy. Sarah Wayne Callies, Polly Draper, William Fichtner, Tim Chiou, James Saito, Freda Foh Shen, and Felisha Terrell co-starred. The series ran its last episode on May 7; it was also, in the words of our own Mary Kate Carr, “the best Sunday show you’re not watching,” so bad job there, ABC/everyone.
Finally, Big Sky was the latest crime drama to pour forth from the ever-active mind of David E. Kelley, and starred Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury as detectives solving a series of grisly kidnappings and murders in rural Montana. The show rebranded itself as Big Sky: Deadly Trails in its final season, although maybe it should have called itself Big Sky: Reba McIntire Stars In This One, because she did.
The cancellations come as ABC prepares for next week’s upfronts, where the network will have to roll out a schedule for the fall—one that will probably be light on scripted content, heavy on reality shows and imports, as the WGA strike continues to roll along. Still, as far as “ABC bloodbaths leading into upfronts” go, this one’s lighter than some we’ve witnessed in the past.
31 Comments
I actually did mean to watch the Company You Keep but it really did seem guaranteed to not be renewed with how much it was promoted vs the wait for a renewal. And that was before the writer’s strike.Did anyone watch it and did it have a decent ending?
What 1 season network TV show actually has a conclusive ending?
True. But there’s degrees of “damn this cliffhanger” and “oh I’d like to see some of those plot threads resolved. Oh well.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was structured so that if it got cancelled after 1 season, it was still a nice self-contained story.In fact, the show never ended a season on a cliffhanger for any year they weren’t guaranteed a pick up for the following year which was nice (and even then, Seasons 4 and 6 didn’t exactly end of cliffhangers either, the major season events had been wrapped up either on or before the final episode).
I liked it. A lot of fun (think Leverage, if it took itself more seriously), and it didn’t end on a cliffhanger, which was nice. Worth watching on Hulu.
Yeah I did watch the first episode and found it mostly fun. Looked a little flat and a little cliche but it had charm with its cast. I’ll have to finish it if it didn’t have a cliffhanger. I also think Catherine Haena Kim is gorgeous so hopefully she pops up in things.Milo will probably be fine. He looked surprisingly wide in the pilot. Like he packed on a lot of muscle. And saw him on a motorcycle and in a leather jacket so start your Ghost Rider fancasting.
Lover it and it did have a decent ending
Good to hear! I mean sucks if you loved it but a decent ending is rare in one season wonders. Looks like I have a show to finish.
Aw…I liked Big Sky. Never saw the other two. I haven’t even heard of The Company You Keep.
Saw the first episode of Alaska Daily. Wasn’t bad.
I enjoyed Alaska Daily. My problems with it were Hillary Swank’s character being obnoxious & its weird grudge with “cancel culture.” I did not let myself get too attached to it though since a show about an Alaskan newspaper pursuing a story about missing indigenous women never felt like something that people were going to watch in significant numbers, unfortunately.
Seems more and more amazing by the day that Agents of SHIELD got 7 seasons on ABC and on top of frequently being very good to excellent at its best, it got a satisfying conclusion as well.
Agents of SHIELD was such a great show & had a great run in spite of ABC I think, thanks to the deal with its production company
We watched two of these and won’t miss “Alaska Daily.” But we’ll miss “Big Sky” a little bit because of its charismatic leads.
Big Sky was mostly dumb fun. I still think the Priest with the Tesla (which became a so dumb plot point) was hilarious. We watched it all and I had no idea they changed the title for season 3.But that Tesla…I remember at the time that not only were there no Tesla dealerships in Montana, there were none in Idaho, Wyoming, North, or South Dakota. So he had to cross at least two state lines to get that car and God forbid it ever needed service!
We liked the FBI guy or wherever he was from in S2 that was tracking Ronald (missed than numbskull too). Then agent guy was just gone with the kidnapped woman from S1 off to wherever. Dumb fun is about right. Interesting fact: the secretary actress was a Playboy model back in the day.
I did not know that, but for some reason I knew she is Michelle Pfieffer’s sister.
Well I did not know that they were sisters.
Just speak for yourself man. None of this “we” shit..
I never did see Big Sky but Katheryn Winnick would’ve gotten me to check it out if it ever actually sunk into my brain that she starred in it. I knew this! And yet.
S1 and first 1/2 of S2 are worth checking out.
Big Sky, because the pretty leads keep getting kidnapped by every villain!Alaska Daily was good. We need more shows about reporters digging for the truth.
i wonder how much these cancellations are being influenced by the writer’s strike. seems like it would be a lot easier to pull the plug if you know the next season would be substantially delayed anyhow, but of course cancellations happen all the time in any case.
Kylie Bunbury is my one-and-done queen. Twisted and Pitch were shows I loved in large part because of her (we’ll tiptoe past season 3 of Under the Dome if you please), so I’m glad she at least got multiple seasons of Big Sky.
As has been said, the writers’ strike is going to be a big influence on things this year.
How about the creators of material, for example, the writers, get paid more fairly instead of forcing them to fight for it?
I watched the first episode of The Company You Keep and it just felt tonally…off. Like it felt like it should be a zippy heist series with an upbeat jazzy Oceans Eleven-style score, but instead it had all the visual and auditory panache of a CBS procedural.
It’s adapted from a Korean show. In the end I hated the story because each time they paid off part of their debt, the woman just kept adding more and more, which a bullet to her head could easily have dealt with this problem. And the leads had zero chemistry.
Do what you gotta do to keep paying for Andor, Disney.
I kept saying I’d get around to Big Sky. The Kylie Bunburry of it all. When I finally watched it I was a little disappointed that it was just a detective show. Advertising made it seem like there was more going on
These all came off as too high concept. This fails, because we live in an age where people think it’s fine to say the Earth is flat.Had this been the ‘90s or even early 2000s, they might have had a shot.
Awww. Too bad “Alaska Daily” was canned. So sorry to all those Canadian communities doubling as Alaska, since Republicans in the Alaska State Legislature destroyed the TV/Film incentive program designed to have “Alaskan” tv shows and films actually shoot in state and hire locals.