Bob Hearts Abishola has been one of CBS‘ most stable ratings hit since its 2019 premiere, but after surviving a pandemic and the Hollywood double strike, the show is coming to an end.
Deadline reported in November of 2023 that season five would be Bob Hearts Abishola‘s last. It premiered in February and will have its final curtain call in May, but it’s still among audiences’ most esteemed network sit-coms of its time.
The show begins when Bob, a businessman running a compression socks business, suffers a mild heart attack, meets Abishola, his nurse, and develops feelings for her. Across its five seasons, the two have fallen in love, gotten married, and faced the trials and tribulations of life as an interracial couple.
The hilarious sitcom was made to celebrate immigrant communities in the United States and has given Nigerian families a spotlight they haven’t typically enjoyed in the television landscape of the country. “This series expertly showcased a family love story and workplace comedy about the immigrant experience with heartfelt humor and emotion while also authentically portraying Nigerian culture,” CBS Entertainment president Amy Reisenbach told Deadline.
So why did CBS cancel Bob Hearts Abishola?
As with many other shows before it, the likeliest cause for Bob Hearts Abishola‘s cancelation was that it was no longer profitable for the network. Deadline had previously reported that, coming out of the strikes, the show had cut costs by downgrading the majority of its ensemble cast from series regulars to recurring characters, in the hopes of securing a renewal. Only the two leads, Billy Gardell and Folake Olowofoyeku, kept their full-time jobs.
More so than the ratings (the show only lost 1,43 million average viewers between its first and fourth seasons, according to Showbuzz Daily), it’s the ripple effect of the Writers and Actors’ strikes that led CBS to rethink its programming. In a space of a few months, the network also axed another Chuck Lorre original Young Sheldon, as well as the long-running police procedurals S.W.A.T and Blue Bloods — the latter of which had been on the air for 14 years.
Speaking to Deadline about CBS’ plan to think more in the long term instead of carrying on their traditional season-to-season pilot-order approach, Reisenbach confessed: “It is a function of having a really strong schedule that we have to refresh and that means in order to refresh, shows have to eventually end.” The CBS Entertainment director did mention, however, that the network insists on giving fans the ending they deserve by planning ahead of time.
“We knew for quite a while that [Bob Hearts Abishola] was going to be ending and we had conversations with Chuck [Lorre] where he really appreciated that he had the time. He knew in advance that the show was going to end so he and the team could write to it. That’s the kind of ending that when shows end we want to give them.”
Bob Hearts Abishola‘s final episodes air on Mondays, at 8:30 pm ET, on CBS. Its first four seasons can be streamed on Max, while season five is exclusively on Paramount Plus.