Netflix is breaking it off with Michelle Wolf's The Break (and also The Joel McHale Show)
And so goes another experiment in Netflix’s ongoing efforts to get people interested in timely streaming content: Deadline reports that the streaming service has just decided to simultaneously discontinue The Break With Michelle Wolf and The Joel McHale Show. Both series were comedy talk shows that aired on a weekly basis, although The Break had quite a bit more buzz around it, at least in part because of Wolf’s fiery, funny performance at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
But while Netflix will never, ever tell us how either of these shows actually did with viewers—because we’ll get those numbers only if we pry them out of the company’s dead, binge-addicted hands—reports suggest that the answer is “Not so hot.” That’s a shame, both because Wolf’s show was full of sketches that took semi-straightforward comedy premises and then made them delightfully absurd, and because talking sarcastically about pop culture seems to be the only thing that makes Joel McHale happy. (We can relate.)
Not that this latest instance of getting hurled from the comedy talk horse seems to have Netflix feeling skittish about future developments; the company recently acquired Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, and will soon add Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act, Norm Macdonald Has A Show, and comedy panel show The Fix to a roster that already includes Dave Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.