It’s Friday, it’s after 5 p.m. on the West Coast, and all of the people who make decisions about canceling TV shows have already exited the building and shut off their cellphones so that nobody can yell at them. It can only mean one thing: The Friday Night TV Murder Pile hungers for fresh blood.
That’s right, folks: The unloved, unacknowledged spot where TV networks announce they’re killing off shows they don’t think they need to apologize to anybody for canceling is getting a fresh load of bodies tonight, as Fox clears a couple of modestly-performing procedurals off of its schedule. Specifically: third-season drama Alert: Missing Persons Unit, which starred Scott Caan and Dania Ramirez as a former married couple who apparently got alerted when persons went missing, and Élodie Yung’s The Cleaning Lady, which wrapped its fourth season this week. Both shows had reportedly been on the dreaded bubble all season, but Fox was apparently giving them the courtesy of finishing out their current seasons before dropping the axe. (Nicer than pulling a show halfway through its two-season order, certainly, as Prime Video pulled on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Étoile earlier this evening.)
The cancellations leave just two question marks remaining on the Fox schedule, as everything else has either been killed off or renewed: Anthology series Accused, and animated comedy The Great North. Network president Michael Thorn addressed both shows in recent comments: Accused, created by Howard Gordon, is an odd duck in so far as it swaps out casts every episode, so it’s easy to bring back whenever Fox feels like it. As for The Great North, it’s still got a fifth season to air over the summer, at which point it’ll be evaluated for survival. (Deadline says it’s all but dead, though, so, y’know, watch this space/pile.)
