Talamasca, Watson, and DMV all just got tossed on the Friday night cancellation pile

It’s a diverse enough crop that it’s hard to pull any meaningful lessons from this particular bloodbath, besides some very basic ones about shows that seemed to assume an IP connection can paper over other, more structural, defects. (We mostly mean Talamasca and Watson there, by the way; we’re not trying to suggest that the Department Of Motor Vehicle is particularly strong franchise bait.) Talamasca is getting axed after a single season, having been the second attempted spin-off of AMC’s little mini-franchise of Anne Rice shows. Unlike Mayfair Witches—which is still on the hook for a third season—the series wasn’t directly based on any of Rice’s books, and instead attempted to expand the universe by following Nicholas Denton as a semi-regular guy who gets pulled into a conspiracy features vampires, witches, and other immortals.

Watson, meanwhile, took a similarly agnostic approach to its source material: The two-season CBS procedural was basically “House but sometimes Sherlock Holmes stuff happens,” with Morris Chestnut starring as a modern-day John Watson who starts an experimental research clinic after the supposed death of his old buddy Sherlock. The series did well enough in its initial outing to secure a second season from the network, but poorly enough that you’re now reading these exact words on an internet page. DMV, meanwhile, is getting shut down after just a single season. Created by Dana Klein, the show attempted to give the workplace comedy treatment to the drained souls of its titular organization; Harriet Dyer, Tony Cavalero, Molly Kearney, Alex Tarrant, Gigi Zumbado, and Tim Meadows all starred. Both shows are still in the midst of airing their current (and now final) seasons.

In a rarity for shows landing on the FNTVMP, Talamasca got a brief eulogy from AMC, presumably because it wants to keep in the good graces of the Interview team. “While we are not proceeding with another season of Talamasca: The Secret Order,” a network statement said, “We are proud of the series and grateful for the efforts of everyone involved. The Talamasca has a storied place within the Anne Rice Immortal Universe, and we expect to see at least some of these characters, and the organization itself, in future expressions of the franchise.”