Damn, there are lots of shows getting the axe today

You ever have one of those days where all you write about is TV shows getting the axe? We’re having one of those days: Hot on the heels of Max canceling its well-loved animated sci-fi series Scavengers Reign, and Fox pulling the plug on Lisa Kudrow’s animated HouseBroken, news has now arrived that ABC’s Not Dead Yet, Apple’s Constellation, and Hulu’s The Other Black Girl have also been canceled this evening. Truly, the Friday Night TV Murder Pile: She is a-hoppin’ this week.

Let’s take these in order: Not Dead Yet is getting shut down after two seasons on the air, with ABC putting an abrupt lie to the title of the Gina Rodriguez-starring comedy. (Not to be confused with CBS’s Ghosts, even though both shows shared an “Our main character can see the dead!” premise.) Although well-liked by critics—our own review of the first season, penned by Max Gao, gave it an optimistic B—the series was the poorest performer out of ABC’s already light half-hour comedy portfolio, performing worse than veteran series Abbott Elementary and The Conners.

Apple, meanwhile, has cut the lights on Constellation after only a single season, ending the sci-fi mystery thriller without resolving its various dangling plot threads. Created by Peter Harness, the show starred Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks as NASA folks trying to get to the bottom of an accident that damaged the International Space Station. The series pulled modestly good reviews (including a positive one from our own Saloni Gajjar), although if we’re being honest, there are so many science fiction mystery-type shows kicking around in streaming land these days (including and especially on Apple) that we’d kind of lost track of it by the time it ended its season back in March.

Finally, Hulu announced tonight that it was ending Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl, which starred Sinclair Daniel and Ashleigh Murray as two young Black women working at a New York publishing house. A blend of satire, horror, and mystery show, the series drew from Harris’ experiences dealing with racism and other idiocies in the corporate world of publishing, and drew strong reviews for its portrayal of same. As with pretty much all Friday night cancellations, the show—which dropped its first season back in September of 2023—has now passed from this mortal coil without comment from the streamer; thus is the fate of almost all shows killed off while their corporate bosses are heading out the door to catch an early dinner, alas.