By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 16, 2023 |
By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 16, 2023 |
Jeffrey Donovan, who has played Det. Frank Cosgrove for two seasons on the revival of Law & Order, has exited the series. His departure is reportedly due to “creative differences,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense on a long-running drama that is mostly plug-and-play.
Cosgrove began as the unlikable anti-woke cope, but he mostly shook that off in the second season and settled into a more sympathetic anti-corrupt detective and loving father. There must be more to the story than “creative differences,” but L&O is down one detective only days or — at most — weeks before shooting begins on the shortened 2024 season.
In case you missed it, Welcome to Wrexham has been renewed for a third season. Deservedly.
Elsewhere, over on CBS, they’re pulling the plug on two long-running series after their forthcoming seasons. Seal Team, which had moved to Paramount+, will end after its seventh season, set to air early next year. Likewise, Young Sheldon, who is not so young anymore (Iain Armitage is 15), will end after its seventh season, as well, before fans begin to notice that he looks nothing like Jim Parsons.
Finally, in another instance where the studios were waiting for the strikes to end before making the announcements, Netflix has canned five series. Three are adult animated series — Agent Elvis, Farzar and Captain Fall — and two live-action series, the comedy Glamorous and the fantasy series Shadow and Bone.
Shadow and Bone is the only one of the five that has aired more than one season. Officially, the cancellations were due to the strike. More accurately, because of the strike, production on a whole slew of series will begin soon, meaning there will be too many shows ready for the back half of 2024. Netflix canceled some underperformers to ease the glut.
Shadow and Bone likely falls under a different category. There was a lot of excitement surrounding that series after its first season, but that excitement waned after nearly two years between seasons due to the pandemic. Another long hiatus would not help, and it was already an expensive series. This is a show that just had a run of bad luck.