AMC may be able to entice millions and millions of eyeballs to show up for the likes of The Walking Dead, but they have a much tougher row to hoe when it comes to programs like AMC’s Turn. On the bright side, the Revolutionary War drama is well-liked by fans, and apparently that’s enough to satisfy the cabler. On Wednesday, AMC announced that Turn: Washington’s Spies has been renewed for a third season on the network.
Considering Turn is a drama following an actually historical event in U.S. history, this is especially cool news. The series follows the advent of the Culper spy ring during the war, and focuses on Abe Woodhull (Jamie Bell), a man recruited into spying despite the fact other members of his family are loyalists. Early episodes of the series were set in 1776, but by the end of Season 2, other lead Ben Talmadge (Seth Numrich) was fighting in the Battle of Monmouth, making it 1778. In the real historical record, the British didn’t even stomped on until the French showed up at Yorktown and formal negotiations didn’t end the war until 1783. What I’m saying is, there’s still a lot of ground to cover on Turn: Washington’s Spies, should AMC stick with the series.
AMC says they “loved” the creative aspects of Turn Season 2, and that was apparently enough to give the show a Season 3 renewal. It helped that Turn averaged 1.6 million total viewers on Monday nights, although when you look at the Live+ numbers and ratings, the show was barely pulling in an audience in the 18-49 demo, at all. Ratings are really important for network advertisers, but cable can sometimes manage to keep programs on the air that have passionate but niche fanbases. And AMC’s release notes that Turn’s audience is growing, up 20% in overall viewership and 70% in Twitter followers.
There aren’t a ton of historical fiction programs on television right now, even if you are counting wishy-washy supernatural stuff like Sleepy Hollow, which does employee an unusually large number of Revolutionary War era historical figures. Turn: Washington’s Spies definitely has a unique grasp on the historical stuff, and may have even been a better fit for a channel like History than a channel like AMC. Regardless, fans should just be happy the series will be sticking around for another round.
Obviously, it’s a little early for AMC to know where Season 3 is headed and when it will air. Season 2 of Turn: Washington’s Spies just wrapped up in June. Given the fact that the show has traditionally aired during the late spring and summer months, it’s likely we could be seeing new episodes of Turn during the warm part of the year in 2016, as well. We’ll let you know as soon as AMC announces a premiere date, and if any other interesting tidbits related to the series waft our way.
