Wicked City, the period drama with passionate serial killers, has become the first show to get cancelled this fall season. Broadcast network ABC scraped it off due to low ratings and bad reviews. The cancellation was followed by three continuous low-rated episodes. This anthology drama will be pulled from its schedule immediately, said an ABC spokesperson. The Tuesday 10 p.m. slot will be taken over by repeats of Shark Tank instead.
Production on Wicked City will conclude after episode eight, which is currently filming. Whether the five unaired episodes will be telecasted or not is still unclear.
The period drama, set in the 1980s with Ed Westwick and Erica Christensen as its two main characters, opened up to decidedly dismal reviews. It scored just a 0.9 in the all-important adults 18-49 demographic and 3.3 million total viewers against the World Series in its Tuesday at 10 p.m. slot. Week 2 of the telecast witnessed a drop of 22 percent in the demo to a 0.7, followed by a 0.4 in the adults under 50 set—the lowest number for a Big Four original telecast this fall.
The show was produced in-house by ABC Studios and Mandeville Television. The period drama by Steven Baigelman and showrunner Amy Harris becomes the first official series to get cancelled and removed from the schedule outright. As per the initial plan for Wicked City, the show was supposed to be rebooted with a new case every episode, with the cast remaining the same for each episode. Christensen and her co-star Taissa Farmiga have inked one year deals.
This fall season, broadcast networks have been opting for long-game strategies, waiting for three, seven, and sometimes—optimistically—30-day DVR returns before making any official judgments. As live viewership no longer remains the benchmark for determining success, and trimming off episodes becomes the new cancelled, production houses deal are dealing with shows a bit less harshly.
ABC network also handed out additional episodes for shows like The Muppets, Dr. Ken, and the new drama Quantico. On the flip side, the network had to trim the order for the struggling new Sunday drama Blood and Oil by three. The Tuesday 10 p.m. slot has always been a struggling slot for ABC. Initially, Quantico was supposed to have that slot, but then the show was moved to Sundays. The decision was made after the biblical saga Of Kings and Prophets was being retooled and pushed from the fall.
ABC witnesses moderate success with the procedural Forever, but this Warner Bros. Television-produced series was cancelled after the network wanted more ownership stake in its programming. Two years ago, ABC witnessed three continuous series fail in the same slot with Killer Women, Mind Games, and Lucky 7 being cancelled abruptly in the middle of its run. It seems like the slot has been giving ABC major trouble. ABC’s bench still consists of first-year dramas The Family, as well as Kings and Prophets in addition to comedies Uncle Buck and The Real O’Neals.
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