Netflix cancels The Vince Staples Show and abandons Kurt Sutter's The Abandons

The news was one of two cancellations the streamer handed down today, having also placed up on the chopping block two-season comedy series The Vince Staples Show. That one’s both a bummer, and a bit of a surprise, in so far as the show—originally created by the Summertime ’06 rapper with Ian Edelman and Maurice Williams, and centered on a surreal version of Staples’ life as an easily recognized celebrity—was both a critical hit and a genuinely funny, interesting slice of comedy TV. In The A.V. Club‘s review of the show’s second season, Leila Latif wrote that, “In a landscape crowded with self-referential comedies, this one still feels singular, less a parody of Black excellence than a meditation on what it costs to live inside your own image,” praising Staples’ chops as a comic actor, and ultimately calling the series “one of Netflix’s brightest comedies.”

The Abandons, not so much. Even if you ignore the show’s dismal critical reaction—our own D+ was par for the course, noting that not even TV stalwarts like Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson could find much to do with the series’ stale take on 1850s frontier living—the show’s incredibly troubled production probably had it doomed anyway. In what could be taken as a preemptive bout of title pun synergy, Sutter reportedly walked away from the series with an episode left to film after getting into arguments with the streamer, leaving the show’s other producers to scramble to get something workable on the screen. That wouldn’t have boded well even if the resulting series turned out to be a masterpiece; as is, it’s one of the less surprising cancellations we’ve seen in a minute.