Showtime decides to un-save Neil Patrick Harris' Uncoupled

Even in a TV world where a renewal notice can frequently mean “Sure, we’re giving you a second season—unless we end up changing our minds!” the following reversal is something of a new one on us: Deadline reports that Showtime has decided to take back its offer to save Neil Patrick Harris’ Netflix dramedy Uncoupled, after promising to give the series a second season last year. News of the un-saving comes more than a year after Showtime made headlines by salvaging the show, which was co-created by Emily In Paris’ Darren Star (working with Modern Family’s Jeffrey Richman), and which starred Harris as a New Yorker who suddenly finds himself single in his late 40s after his supposedly happy marriage abruptly falls apart.

“Saving a show from another network” is one of those classic “good guy” moves a network or streamer can do to build up a little good will; hell, half of Netflix’s own reputation with creators and fans back in the early days of streaming came from its early adoption of the strategy, plucking cult favorites from the jaws of those heartless networks that just didn’t understand them. (Netflix’s current model, which kills basically everything at three seasons because the content mill needs more churn: Not so much.) This is the first time we’ve ever seen a network make the big hero move and then take it back, though, killing off the series presumably for good this time.

Nobody’s talking on the record about any of this, but Showtime apparently put Uncoupled into “redevelopment” to “tailor it to the network’s sensibilities,” a process that apparently took months of work. None of which, ultimately, seems to have been fruitful, leaving the series—which also starred Tuc Watkins, Tisha Campbell, Marcia Gay Harden, Emerson Brooks, and Brooks Ashmanskas—not just dead, but double-dead at this point.