If you haven’t already noticed, it’s cancel/renew time in television right now, and it looks like yet another show has lost the battle to continue for another season. A&E has just cancelled Damien.
The news broke today on creator/showrunner Glen Mazzara’s Twitter page, which has since turned into a running tab of thanks from him to all the fans of the show and everyone at the network, in front of the camera and behind the scenes who helped make the show happen. Mazzara has also served as an executive producer for The Shield, Crash and The Walking Dead, among other shows. This is the first show he’s done since ending his two-year tenure on The Walking Dead in 2013.
Damien was, of course, based on the horror film The Omen. The show followed a now 30-year-old Damien (Bradley James), who’s been working as a war photographer and has forgotten his satanic past. Which makes sense, because, really, if you grew up just knowing you were the Anti-Christ, wouldn’t it seem kinda pointless to go to school, date, get a job and otherwise do normal person things? During the course of the show he begins to come to terms with his true nature and gets help from his life-long protector, Ann (Barbara Hershey) to embrace his heritage.
The Omen was released in 1976 and centered on an American ambassador in Italy and his wife, who adopt a baby after their newborn dies. Their child, it turns out, was murdered so that little Anti-Christ Damien could be raised by a politician, having all the privilege possible that would make it easier for him to ascend to the presidency as an adult. And, obviously, when you’re dealing with Satanists and such, all the good people die and every plan to rid the world of Damien comes crumbling down. That original film spawned three sequels, the last one coming in 1991, one remake in 2006 and The Omen TV show in 1995.
The recent series was first ordered by Lifetime in 2014. I know, that doesn’t fit at all, and apparently someone finally realized that and moved the show to A&E in April of last year. Damien premiered in March of this year, and wasn’t exactly a hit with critics. Review aggregator websites Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes both reported mostly negative reviews for the show, with most complaints stating that the show wasn’t scary enough and didn’t feature interesting characters or good writing. Ouch.
As we know, though, for every critic that hates a show there are a least a couple of hundred who love it, and Damien is no different. If the horror series managed to win you over and you’re going to miss it, take a gander at our summer TV premiere schedule to find another show to drown your television sorrows in.
