Peacock smashes Teacup

“Teacup destroyed by angry Peacock” is no longer just the quick summary of one of our many pieces of P.G. Wodehouse fan fiction: It’s also the fate of the streaming horror series, which has just been canceled by the NBC-affiliated streamer. Per Variety, the series—created by Ian McCulloch, working from a novel by horror author Robert R. McCammon—has been given the kibosh after just a single season.

We were, not to put too fine a point on it, not fans of the show, which starred Yvonne Strahovski, Scott Speedman, and Kathy Baker as a rural family who quickly learns that the big, spooky woods around their house contain a whole bunch of big, spooky stuff. (Also some dudes in gas masks, presumably as a thank you to the show’s marketing department, who used pictures of them liberally in all its posters.) Writing about the series when it debuted back in October 2024, Jenna Scherer noted that, “This show could have been an email” and dinged the simplicity and the obviousness of both its writing, and its standard pack of horror clichés. Other critics were slightly kinder, but that doesn’t appear to have moved the needle as far as the show’s public perception went. (Peacock doesn’t release streaming numbers, so we’ll have to fall back on a simpler, more old-fashioned test: When was the last time you heard literally any other human being talk about the Peacock streaming series Teacup? Yeah, that’s what we thought.) The show, which was co-executive produced by James Wan through his Atomic Monster production studio, also didn’t manage to crack any of Nielsen’s top 10 streaming charts. And also also, we’ve now forgotten it ever existed, too, even as we race to finish writing this final sentence before the full fog of the special kind of memory loss that can only affect a dead streaming show canceled without fanfare can finish setting…

Huh. God, we could swear we were working on something here. Alas!