HBO Renews ‘Enlightened’; Cancels ‘Hung’, ‘Bored To Death’ And ‘How To Make It In America’
Those 2 Golden Globe nominations sure helped. HBO has just picked up the Mike White-Laura Dern comedy Enlightened for a second season, while canceling 3 other comedy series, Hung, Bored To Death and How To Make It In America. Enlightened drew critical praise but struggled mightily in the ratings on Mondays. However, ratings have never been the deciding factor in HBO’s renewal decisions as evident by the longevity of David Simon’s New Orleans drama Treme. The network was already leaning towards picking up Enightened for Season 2 when the dark comedy earned 2 Golden Globe nominations last week, for best comedy series and best actress in a comedy series, Dern.
Hung and Bored To Death are ending their runs after 3 seasons, How To Make It In America after 2. Of the 4 comedies that learned their fate today, Hung has been the highest rated, and star Thomas Jane recently landed his second Golden Globe nomination for his role on the show. But in the end that wasn’t enough.
This is quite the end-of-year house cleaning on the comedy side at HBO, which had kept a slew of marginal performers around for awhile. With Entourage done and Larry David yet to make up his mind whether to continue Curb Your Enthusiasm, Enlightened for now is HBO’s only returning comedy series next year, along with Eastbound & Down whose Season 3 kicks off in February. They will be joined by 4 new half-hour series, Armando Iannucci/Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Veep, Lena Dunham/Judd Apatow’s Girls, Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant’s Life’s Too Short and Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys.
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