Apple TV+ shuts down The Afterparty

Queue up the Semisonic and start putting away the booze: The Afterparty is officially over. Deadline reports that the genre-flipping TV series has now been canceled at AppleTV+, where it ran for two seasons of murder-mystery-solving fun.

Created by Phil Lord, and developed alongside his fellow TV and film mastermind Chris Miller, the series had an undeniable hook: Each episode focused on a different suspect in the murder of the season, adopting a different style and vibe for each installment as it dug into each character’s particular psyche. Starring Tiffany Haddish as the detective investigating each case (and with Sam Richardson and Zoë Chao also returning for season 2), the series got a ton of buzz with its first outing, which hopped between action movies, musical showstoppers, animation, and more.

But the show’s second season had significantly less of an impact—despite a stacked roster of talent that included John Cho, Poppy Liu, Ken Jeong, and Paul Walter Hauser, all inducted into the stylistic fun, and doing riffs on Wes Anderson and Alfred Hitchcock. Released between July and September of this year, the show seemed to come and go with a quickness, and with far less conversation about it popping up online.

And so, the show now finds itself in the doomed locale of oh so many television murder victims: The Friday night dumping ground, from which survivors rarely, if ever, return. It’s not clear why the show seemed to fall off a cliff in its second season: Competition from fellow whodunnit Only Murders In The Building? More competition on AppleTV+ itself? Or just a general exhaustion with the premise? In any case, it’s another example of a big, prestigious streaming show launching with a lot of fanfare, only to have the plug unceremoniously pulled on it a year or so later.