Fans of A&E’s police procedural Unforgettable got some bad news today. The show has been axed by the network and will not return for a fifth season.
According to Deadline, the drama’s 13-episode fourth season will be its last. The cast’s contracts have expired and there appear to be no efforts by the production studio to find a new home for a potential fifth season.
Unforgettable, which was based on a 2008 short story by J. Robert Lennon called “The Rememberer,” focuses on former Syracuse, New York police detective Carrie Wells (Poppy Montgomery) who joins the New York City police department in Queens after her former partner and boyfriend ask for her help cracking a tough case. Wells has a rare condition known as hyperthymesia, giving her an extremely detailed autobiographical memory. She has the ability to visually remember everything she’s seen or heard. Wells is hoping the move will allow her to recall the only thing she’s forgotten: what happened the day her sister was murdered.
The show premiered in September 2011, but has, in its relatively short life, had one of the most checkered renewal pasts. The show was cancelled by CBS, the network where the show originated, in May 2012. With an average of 12.1 million viewers in the Season 1, it was the most watched show on any network to get the axe that season. Soon after its cancelation, TNT and Lifetime looked into picking up the show, but both passed. All was not lost, though. Just a little over a month later CBS decided to reverse the decision and green lit a second season to air in summer 2013. Only seven of the ordered 13 episodes aired, but CBS renewed the show for a third season, which aired in 2014.
After Season 3, the show was cancelled by CBS again in the fall of 2014. The show received another reprieve, though, this time from cable network A&E. The network gave Unforgettable a 13 episode fourth season, which aired from November 2015 through January of this year. Despite a nomination for Favorite New TV Drama at the 2011 People’s Choice Awards, the show got mostly mixed reviews from critics and only had a Metacritic score of 57 out of 100.
If you remember (Ha!) the show from its CBS days, but had no idea it had continued on another network, you’re not alone. A&E did little to promote the show once they got it, and the series premiere on the network only managed to get 1.12 million viewers. While the numbers did get a bit better in the following weeks, those ratings slipped again in the home stretch of the season.
Well, Unforgettable fans will have to do without new episodes of the show from now on, but you can bet it’ll be a while before they forget it.
