TNT’s ‘Mob City’ canceled; Frank Darabont series will not have season 2

Was “Mob City” destined to be just a limited series? This is a question that we have seen flood the internet in the wake of the announcement that the show has been canceled by TNT after just three weeks and effectively six episodes on the air. What we have been able to figure out through all of it is this: This was one of those shows carefully designed to work as a miniseries, but if the ratings had turned out to be amazing, then you better believe that more of them would have been produced. This is just the way television works; if “The Following” had been canceled last year, for example, it probably would have been made out to be some sort of limited even.

Anyway, let’s not fuss over semantics. Here is the official statement from TNT confirming the sad news:

“Mob City was created as a three-week television event and we are incredibly proud of the six hours we presented of this remarkable drama … Although the ratings of the limited series haven’t warranted more hours we are eager to work with Frank Darabont again and were delighted to bring the vibrant world of Mob City to life.”

The thing we feel the saddest for here is that Darabont’s show only averaged around two million viewers an episode, whereas his former series “The Walking Dead” had nearly eight times that on Sunday night. “Mob City” may have never been capable of getting that sort of audience, but it deserved a bigger crowd of viewers than it had. We feel like the show suffered in part thanks to airing during the holiday season, and on a network that is not traditionally used to this sort of programming. Period dramas are something new for TNT.

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Photo: TNT