We all love a good TV series whether it be Game of Thrones, Downtown Abby or even The Walking Dead. We all love to escape for an hour or so into a shows universe and take a break from whatever is going on in our lives.
There are many genres and shows that cater to everyone’s taste. Plus there are so many to choose from and diverse ways to watch them, whether it be at the time of showing, catch up or on an online viewer like Netflix or Amazon Prime. So for us the viewer it is a win situation with many choices in many different places, so what is the downside to it all lights have shade.
For this scenario I find that there are so many shows getting cancelled.
Recently I have noticed that shows I have really got into all seemed to have one thing in common, they get cancelled. Now before I continue I am aware that a lot of TV shows rely heavily in viewing figures because of budgets and finances to create such shows. However I feel that shows do not always get the chance they should especially with all that is involved with making such shows. From the production design, director, costume design to the actors.
I find that so often there is a chop and change from TV companies that they want to accommodate the next big thing. It comes over that some shows are just a trend, or in my opinion they seem it is all about a trend. Others are always timeless especially when it is a period drama, but the downfall is whether the right time period is picked up by the right audiences.
A couple of examples are Emerald City, which was a darker and more in-depth take to the classic Wizard of Oz, many fans loved it and the finale left an open-ended conclusion so a chance for a second season could have been made. But it did not happen. Obviously a lot of fans were not happy with the cancellation and took to social media with hashtags on bringing it back. Sadly that looks unlikely. The network that took on this show was NBC and it is not the first time a classic was cancelled by the said network.
In 2013 NBC brought back to life the Bram Stoker classic of Dracula. Starring Jonathan Rhys Myers as Dracula. This was a series that had an in-depth plot, a different take looking at Dracula not as the vampire portrayed as he normally is, but someone wanting to be a man and fighting the two contrasting ideologies and desires. He wanted to change because of his long-lost love who had returned in a new image but with the same features, just like the novel. It is clever how the characters we sympathised with in other versions were turned around. It was interesting, different and just like Emerald City, it was cancelled.
In the last few weeks another show hit the chopping block, a Shonda Rhimes (creator of Greys Anatomy) creation called Still Star Crossed based on the book of the same name. This show is based in Verona looking at what happens after the death of the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet. After three episodes the scheduling of the programme was changed and then it was cancelled and not up for a renewal of a season two. Fans of the show could not believe it, as they enjoyed looking at a show from a different viewpoint. But I think it was more shocking that it was cancelled even before the first season has finished.
So my wonder is TV companies want us, the public to tune into their channel, to boost their ratings. Yet how are viewers meant to do that when at every turn dramas are being cancelled after one season. The other case for all these cancellations is that sometimes these ideas are just really good ideas but in reality it flops to make a big impression on the wider world.
Honestly I think a lot of it is to do with timing of when these shows are aired and this comes to what I stated earlier about trends. Some shows are thought of at a time when there are a lot of similar shows. Like in the case of Dracula there was True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, so another vampire show may have just not been what people wanted to know about at that time.
In the case of still star-crossed it again comes at a time when historical (even though it is based on Shakespeare) are being on overload, especially with Reign also being cancelled; this show was about the Royal family of the Stuarts and that time period.
In the end that be just the simple answer of it all, in simply the timing was wrong and the programme just did not have the lucky sparkle like others where audiences grabbed it with two hands and went crazy over it.
I mean we cannot compare everything to Game of Thrones can we?
But really we have the power, or we hope we do when it comes to our favourite shows. What we as individual may like and think is doing okay, on a wider spectrum it is not as good as others had hoped.
A Creative Soul 