Time After Time canceled at ABC
After just a small handful of airings, ABC already has made the decision to cancel the series starring Freddie Stroma and Josh Bowman, pulling it from the schedule on Sunday nights. For the coming weeks, Match Game is going to air in the 9:00 p.m. Eastern timeslot instead.
This was a show that on paper, seemed exciting, given that you had an action-packed story all about H.G. Wells traveling into the future in order to stop Jack the Ripper. Following the success of Legends of Tomorrow and the critical acclaim of shows like Outlander, time travel became the newest hot trend for networks on this past pilot season. Unfortunately, for the most part this is something that did not end up working out altogether well for them. Really across the board none of the time-travel shows have become major hits. With Making History over on Fox, you’ve also got a show that is likely to be canceled; meanwhile, over on NBC you have Timeless still on the bubble. That is a very good show, so we’re curious to see whether or not it manages to get another chance to shine.
The big issue with Time After Time is just that it couldn’t get people all that interested from the jump. It never had great ratings, and it continued the trend of ABC struggling to pull in viewers on Sunday. American Crime is getting at the moment ratings that are even worse than Time After Time, but it’s an awards-show magnet and will likely remain on the air because of that alone. Earlier this fall, Secrets and Lies also struggled to get any traction going on the night, Quantico struggled later on in the night, and we saw Once Upon a Time dip to some of its lowest ratings to date.
In the end, Time After Time is probably the sort of show that may have worked on a network like Syfy or BBC America, which is known for having this sort of programming and lower ratings expectations. Unfortunately, a time-travel series featuring two historical figures at the end just couldn’t get a whole lot of traction.
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