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.
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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.
