TV Revivals: Why couldn’t a Rizzoli & Isles season 8 happen?

The fact that we didn’t get a Rizzoli & Isles season 8 on TNT is one of the biggest cable TV buzzkills in recent memory. It’s still hard to comprehend why this show didn’t keep going for another season or two or three. The seventh season was averaging a 0.6 rating and over four million viewers, which are significantly better numbers than many of the series that the network has renewed over the past couple of years. The Sasha Alexander – Angie Harmon series even outperformed what Claws did in the demo, let alone total viewers and that was widely considered to be one of TNT’s biggest hits last summer. The same goes for The Alienist, a much-hyped series with Dakota Fanning in the cast.

Do we think that at some point, the network is going to reconsider the move that they made and try to get the show back on the air again? CarterMatt would love to say that this is going to happen, even though at the moment we’re pretty aware that it probably won’t.

There are a number of different reasons why we probably won’t see another Rizzoli & Isles season, but the biggest one seems to just be that TNT isn’t altogether interested in going back to crime procedurals. They got rid of Major Crimes seemingly for the same reason. They wanted to establish a new brand of serialized programming to get critics’ attention, and neither one of these shows fit that bill. Apparently it didn’t even matter if these shows were popular or had large audiences internationally. We do think that the network did the right thing at least in allowing the writers to come up with a fitting conclusion, but the door was firmly left open for more in the event that someone changed their mind.

Now could be the right time to make that happen — USA proved with Psych: The Movie that there is a major market out there for nostalgia, and everyone from NBC to CBS is getting in on it in some capacity. Even if TNT is moving away from procedurals in terms of full-fledged series, why don’t you just do a Rizzoli & Isles movie every year or two? It wouldn’t take too much time out of Harmon and Alexander’s schedules and could allow them to still cater to these characters.

Related – Want to vote for Rizzoli & Isles to get to the next round of our TV Revivals polls?

Do you want to see a Rizzoli & Isles season 8 happen, and if so, what do you want the story of the show to be about? Share some of your thoughts on that subject in the comments! Meanwhile, be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want some other updates when it comes to the series. (Photo: TNT.)