Detectives, turn in your badges. After one dismayingly low-rated season, Fox’s limited series Gracepoint will not be continued, effectively canceling the David Tennant and Anna Gunn-led murder mystery, which adapted British series Broadchurch.
Though Fox isn’t using the word ‘canceled,’ considering Gracepoint was originally billed as a limited series, the network certainly would have brought it back had the numbers been higher. Broadchurch, which also stars Tennant in the same role, will be returning for a second ‘series’ on January 5th.
For Gracepoint, though, the writing was really on the wall from day one, after the series premiered to 4.76 million viewers and a soft 1.2 in the key 18-49 demographic, a figure that had ticked down to 4 million viewers and a 0.9 rating by the time the finale aired. And even before that, Gracepoint had fought an uphill battle against critics who denounced it as an utterly unnecessary redo of a British series that was still readily available for anyone who sought it out.
It’s been a pretty brutal fall season for Fox, with the exception of comic-book prequel series Gotham. Outside of that critical and commercial success, the network has witnessed the failure of multiple freshmen series, including pricey reality show Utopia, medical dramedy Red Band Society and standup sitcom Mulaney. It’s a safe bet that none of those series will be returning for second seasons, which should allow Fox to mostly wipe the slate clean and figure out what went wrong.
Tell us, did you watch Gracepoint? If so, why don’t you think it caught on with viewers? Let us know below!