Guys, remember when a show would get canceled, and it used to be Fox that would be the butt of all the jokes? I’m pretty sure that NBC has taken the mantle where that’s concerned. The latest series to get the peacock’s boot is the half-Swedish comedy Welcome to Sweden, which was canceled just a couple of weeks into its Season 2 run. And then there was one…comedy left on NBC’s slate at the moment.
Welcome to Sweden, created by Greg Poehler and executive produced by his sister Amy Poehler, debuted in the summer of 2014 with over 3.5 million viewers, which isn’t too shabby for a series that didn’t have a lot to market beyond the Poehlers’ name. And though it was well-received by critics, the show couldn’t maintain its audience, which was the first point made by Greg Poehler in announcing the show’s cancelation via his Instagram account, which NBC later confirmed.
Damn the network that cancels a show that Patrick Duffy stars in! That’s seriously about as heartfelt and joyfully morose a goodbye message as one can possibly conceive. It’s not all that unexpected though, as the show’s ratings never came close to reaching those of its premiere, and it fell below the 2-million-viewer mark around Episode 7. Season 2 has been just as dismal, with the two-episode airings failing to bring in over 1.3 million people. Sunday is generally a night when cable ratings are stronger than networks’, so it’s a shame that NBC didn’t try to move it around before axing it, though they might have followed in their own footsteps by just haphazardly throwing it on Saturday evenings before Hannibal and Aquarius.
Unfortunately, NBC won’t even be burning off the rest of the episodes that were already produced. Poehler seems to imply that Hulu, Amazon and NBC’s website – or at least one of them – will be showing off the remaining six episodes, in which we’ll see stars like Paul Simon, Jack Black, Amy Poehler, Neve Campbell and Aubrey Plaza. There’s always the chance that one of the streaming services will back Welcome to Sweden for a third season, especially given the international appeal of the show, but it’s probably not likely.
This is the latest cancelation for NBC, which has already sealed the fates of American Odyssey, Hannibal, State of Affairs and One Big Happy, among others. Thankfully, there are more comedies coming later this summer and fall, including Mr. Robinson, The Carmichael Show, and Truth Be Told. Expect them to last about as long as their opening credits.
