It was revealed this week that CBS cancelled the cop procedural S.W.A.T. after six seasons, marking the end of an era. The show’s future had been up in the air, with more recent updates providing less-than-ideal details on a potential path moving forward. Executive producer Shawn Ryan also previously admitted that the Shemar Moore-led series had yet to be renewed for Season 7 due to financial reasons. One would imagine that longtime fans aren’t too pleased with this outcome, and we now know for sure just how leading man Shemar Moore feels. The actor spoke out after the news broke and, in his estimation, this “makes no sense.”
In the early Saturday morning hours, Shemar Moore took to Instagram to share a lengthy video, and said clip was released shortly after a new episode premiered. The 53-year-old actor admitted to being “sad” while discussing this turn of events. He also conveyed that he was somewhat confused because, as he lays out, the show had done in its time slot, alongside newbie Fire Country
It makes no sense. Look up the articles, read the articles. We’re the best show on Friday nights at 8:00 on CBS. The last two years, we’ve been killing it — us and the fire show. The fire show that comes on right after us. Respect to those brothers and sisters. Respect to them. We’ve done nothing wrong. We did everything that was asked for.
After airing on Sundays for most of Season 5 in place of SEAL Team, S.W.A.T. moved back to Fridays for its sixth season. With that, it kicked off the Eye Network’s big night, which was followed by freshman drama Fire Country, which has been crushing it, and long-running procedural Blue Bloods. Those two programs were ultimately renewed alongside a slew of other CBS shows. (Though the latter series was hit with budget cuts ahead of its 14th season.)
After discussing the ratings, Shemar Moore dropped another point about the show’s significance, as he noted that he was the only African American male lead on network television. Moore went on to call out CBS for allegedly leading him, the cast, and crew to believe in recent weeks that the show wouldn’t come to an end just yet. The star also noted that “politics” and “money” played into this matter. Despite the way the situation looks at the moment though, he doesn’t think they’re done and believes CBS and Sony will realize their “mistake.” With that, Moore encouraged fans to make their voices heard and rally around the show:
I still have faith that S.W.A.T. will live to see another day. I don’t know where, I don’t know how. So I’m asking my homies, my fans, and my baby girls and the rest of the world who follow me or follow the show, the rest of the cast, my brothers and my sisters, make some fucking noise and let them know that cancelling S.W.A.T. is a fucking mistake.
Shows have been saved before and, in some very rare cases, networks have even reversed their cancellation decisions like NBC did with Timeless. So it theoretically wouldn’t be impossible for S.W.A.T. to make some kind of comeback in some way. Shemar Moore has expressed a lot of pride over his show over the years and, in 2022, he discussed its success as it hit the 100-episode mark. With that in mind, it’s not too surprising to see that he feels so strongly about this development. Check out his video in its entirety below:
It’s rarely ever easy to hear that your favorite TV show has been canned, and that feeling can also ring true for the stars of said series. S.W.A.T. has definitely had a solid run, but it’s clear that Shemar Moore — and the fans in the comments of his post — think it has more in the tank. Only time will tell if the network reconsiders or if sister streaming service Paramount+, which positively impacted SEAL Team, might get it. (The latter might be doubtful as well since it’s under the same corporate umbrella.) In the meantime though, we can only wait and see and check out the last installments as they air.
S.W.A.T. will air its final episode on Friday, May 19 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS as part of the 2023 TV schedule. You can also stream past episodes using a Paramount+ subscription.
