‘Crossbones’ effectively canceled by NBC; final episodes to air August 2

Anyone who has been following the ratings lately likely saw this one coming: “Crossbones” will be walking its own plank soon enough.

NBC announced this week in the midst of Comic-Con that their pirate drama starring John Malkovich will air its final two episodes, following the new installment Friday night, on Saturday, August 2. This means basically that the network has zero expectation that it will pull in decent ratings, but they want to see it finish on the air so that fans don’t get angry at them for pulling the rug out completely from under them.

At one point earlier this summer, we did genuinely feel like “Crossbones” had a real shot at being a big summer sensation. Unfortunately, much of that changed after the first few episodes aired. Malkovich is magnetic, but the show around him just was never polished or entertaining enough. It didn’t have the sort of fun that you would have expected a show all about pirates to have, and this is why we saw the ratings slowly slide over the past several weeks to the point where it was pulling numbers in the 18-49 demographic that are similar to The CW. With the budget that this show had, this is not going to fly when it comes to getting a second season.

What we would say about this 10:00 p.m. Friday timeslot, though, is that the performance of both this show and “Dracula” earlier this year both prove just how difficult it is to have a consistent series in this spot. This is why “Hannibal” likely deserves even more credit than it receives for sustaining an audience where it is very hard to do so.

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Photo: NBC