Apple cancels Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Mr. Corman
The series reportedly got much better after its dour first episode—but it sounds like no one stuck around to find that out
Well, that was fast: Less than two months after debuting on AppleTV+—and literally the same day that it aired what is now its definitively final episode—Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Mr. Corman has just been un-debuted by the streamer. (It’s canceled, we mean to say.)
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the cancellation order for the series—which starred Gordon-Levitt as a miserable middle school teacher who seemed bound and determined to make everyone around him just as mopey—was handed down within hours of that season finale going live on the company’s servers.
Among other things, that makes Corman only the second show Apple has killed off after only a single season during its so-far short run as a streamer. (The other was Little Voice; the company is currently clearly in a “Let’s see wait and see” mood on most of its non-Ted Lasso projects.) The series leaned heavily on creator Gordon-Levitt’s talents, not only putting him front and center as the star (in a role that was more-or-less impossible not to compare to his turn as a similarly sad sack in 500 Days Of Summer) but also tasking him with both writing and directing large chunks of its run.
Our review of the full first season of the dramedy, penned by Sulagna Misra, might reveal why the series—which had some genuine strengths, including its energetic blending of music and reality—failed to take off with people:
The first episode of Mr. Corman—a new Apple TV+ series created, written, and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt—is all about what a drag its eponymous lead character is. Josh Corman (Gordon-Levitt) is anxious, awkward around his public-school students, and unable to see the joy in the world around him.
“Luckily,” Misra writes, “That’s just the setup for the show to demonstrate how wrong he is.”
Except, of course, it doesn’t sound like all too many people stuck around to see that demonstration play out. That sort of slow burn is workable in a film; after all, you’ve already paid the ticket money, so you might as well stick around and see this guy eventually come to life. In a TV series, though, it was apparently a turn-off for too many people, and so Mr. Corman’s pleasures will remain buried beneath that dour first impression.