Over the past year or so, Netflix had made a big push to get some unscripted, non-narrative shows onto their slate, fearing that it was one of the few blindspots they were not catering to. But two of the most high-profile shows to premiere over the last year have already bit the dust.
The Break With Michelle Wolf and The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale have both been cancelled by the streaming giant. While the former had just wrapped its first ten-episode run and the latter completing 19 episodes, Netflix has obviously not seen the kind of viewing figures they would like for either series.
This follows the recent cancellation of Chelsea Handler‘s talk show, Chelsea, which was another attempt by Netflix to produce an up-to-date bi-weekly series. It seems that while more and more consumers are flocking to Netflix by the day, talk shows and ‘entertainment review shows’ aren’t really the kind of thing people are looking to watch when confronted with a mass of content.
It’s a shame, because The Break had every chance to be Netflix’s answer to The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight and be the white-hot politically charged show to make waves, while McHale’s show was an entertaining riff on his former breakout hosting role on E’s The Soup.
Unfortunately, we’ll never know the exact reason for the cancellation of both shows, as Netflix keeps its viewing date private. However, they’ve already moved forward in their seemingly desperate attempt to find a successful streaming-based talk show, having ordered unscripted shows from Norm Macdonald and Hasan Minhaj. We’ll see if these shows prove more successful.
#Peace.Love.Netflix
