Being the huge Twilight Zone fan I am, this is sad news to hear the most recent reboot courtesy of Jordan Peele has not been renewed for a third season. Strangely, it sounds like the showrunners are the reason it’s not returning, not the network.
While the first episode of the reboot drove up CBS All Access’ level of unique viewers to an all-time high, per the streamer, it will not come back when CBS All Access is rebranded as Paramount Plus on March 4.
That makes a total of 20 episodes over two seasons. The previous reboot effort from 2002-2003, with host Forest Whitaker, ran one season on UPN with 43 total episodes. Prior to that the 1985-1989 reboot — the most successful of reboots — lasted three seasons with 65 total episodes.
The original series ran from 1959-1964 for five seasons with a total of 156 episode, most of which were written by Rod Serling and all hosted and narrated by him. True story that Serling wrote more Twilight Zone episodes himself than any of the other reboot efforts have lasted. A testament to the quality of his writing.
My guess is we’ll see another Twilight Zone TV show reboot, perhaps another 10-20 years from now. This show is too good not to keep trying to recapture the magic. Maybe the next one will go true old school and keep it black and white, shot on film like the original with stories from writes modeling what Serling did in the original, only brought up to date in 2021. Peele and his team tried to do this, even offering a black and white version, but I think the longer than 30 minute episodes hindered the quality. Twilight Zone is perfect for 30 minute or less episodes. Even the fourth season of the classic that tried longer episodes stumbled in ratings. The fifth season they went back to the 30 minute run time.
It’s also possible that somebody will take a shot at another Twilight Zone movie. The last one might seem to be cursed with Vic Morrow and two child actors tragically killed in a stunt gone wrong, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we see another TZ movie.
Hopefully, Paramount+ will offer every Twilight Zone reboot episode on their service. The original is everywhere and Jordan Peele’s version is available, but the other two versions aren’t widely available, except on DVD. Some of these episodes were very well done. Twilight Zone fans deserve to see the entire history of Twilight Zone on Paramount+.
My post #62 on the subject in the official DC Universe forum on the cancellation of DC Daily
Remember this, eventually all shows — amazing, good, bad or indifferent — get canceled.
The Simpsons, beloved, iconic and sacred as it has been, will be canceled someday. So, it’s not really shocking to me that DC Daily — a show many readers here probably haven’t even heard about (it’s very niche) — is being canceled next month.
After more than 400 episodes, which never were quite completely “daily” (they skipped days due to a wide variety of reasons), the last episode of DC Daily has officially been announced to be aired Friday, July 3, 2020.
Some background is necessary.
I’ve been a DC Universe paid subscriber for over six months now. While I enjoyed watching DC Daily show from time to time, I wasn’t a huge must tune in daily fan. Let’s call me a “sometimes watch and enjoyed fan”. Stripped down, it was a polished DC advertorial/commercial vehicle in a semi talk show vs. podcast format. Think a wee bit of Joe Rogan’s video podcast meets several DC comics superfans over-excited about anything and everything DC-oriented.
A winning formula for the many fans who would kill for more spotlight on their favorite DC superheroes, but perhaps just too niche to gain any kind of significant mainstream audience.
Of all the original shows on DC Universe streaming service, DC Daily is the least expensive to produce. Evidently, however, the news program simply could not overcome the unexpected production challenges that have arisen as a result of the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Still, DC Universe appears to be affording the show’s hosts a farewell tour, of sorts, allowing them a chance to bid viewers farewell before DC Daily comes to an end next month.
I think the biggest problem with DC Daily was not enough cynicism to play against the massive optimism. Nothing DC did was ever bad – which, frankly, is unrealistic and untrue. I get it, a fan show, why would you ever promote and pay for a daily show that criticized your own products and services? Ok, they did criticize some things, but it was very much outweighed by the overwhelming, over-heaping portions of positive press on, well, everything DC.
To be interesting, some amount of conflict is necessary. It’s just human nature that if everything is always positive in a quasi news/entertainment show, that’s not very entertaining. It’s boring watching something without any controversy or conflict. Sorry, it just is.
Too much conflict is also tiring. Jerry Springer? Wasn’t a big fan. That’s what I mean by too much conflict.
I’m not trying to kick the show on its way out, no, I liked DC Daily and watched it from time to time, but honestly got more interesting, useful, entertaining unfiltered news from reading a wide variety of bloggers and news outlets and, yes, even DCU’s own messageboard than from watching DC Daily.
What DC Daily did give me was the uber fan perspective on comic book characters. Sometimes that origin and backstory info was blurted out so quickly that I became lost and had to search around and learn more. So, there will be value lost in DC Daily being canceled.
Speaking of the DC Universe messageboards — and forgive this sidebar — their tech support really need to do something about the architecture. You see this broken error message way too often. Somebody, get with the sysadmin and figure out the traffic bottleneck with scripts running wild crashing the board.
Just about every other time I visit DC Universe this fail to load message comes up at least once. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve stopped visiting the forums very often. Too bad, too, because their community often has very good discussions and, even though it likes to lean with a group that is extremely pro-DC on everything (just like DC Daily) it has enough cynicism to keep it somewhat grounded.
Back to DC Daily.
As someone in the DC community pointed out, the YouTube DC Daily had trouble amassing over 10,000 views on YouTube for episodes. That doesn’t show enough wide interest to suggest the eyeballs on the show itself were worth how much it was costing to produce. Given, as the article quoted stated, it was the lowest cost production, but you have to pay the hosts something, the editors, etc. Also, factor in the pandemic and it essentially became a work from home show with grainy, laptop video talking heads show. There are tens of thousands of shows like that already on YouTube.
Anyway, I think my comments on the DCU official messageboard shown in the image at the very top of the post state my affection for the DC Daily show, perhaps better than this post, which tends to have a more realistic look at the business side of keeping a show like that running. It doesn’t make very good financial sense sometimes to keep shows that many of us — even those who watch here and there — a show running.
Just too many other movies and TV shows vying for our attention and interest.
Drew Barrymore erotic finger sucking turns into … (see next photo)
Oh yes, these are unusual times.
The good news is if you’re looking for entertaining movies and TV shows to watch, there are tons of options. Shortly, we’re going to talk about one I somehow missed called Santa Clarita Diet.
When this blog started we didn’t do FIRST LOOK on anything except new movies coming to theaters, then because the last couple months we haven’t had any theaters open to watch new movies (except some scattered drive-in theaters in other parts of the country), we started covering new movies and TV series on streaming.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised how many entertaining TV shows there are to watch. Way too many for any one single person who works a completely unrelated full time job. So, what you get here, is me covering as much as I can of what hits my radar and either would like to watch or have watched. What I’m finding most interesting and entertaining at the moment, if you will. Most coverage will be new movies when the theaters reopen soon (still looking like July 2020), but sometimes you’ll get some of the “what we missed and caught up with.”
That’s the case here.
Santa Clarita Diet is a TV series in my wheelhouse that ran for three seasons and was not renewed for a fourth. I’m not a huge fan of zombies, but this offers a clever, often humorous take on them. It’s exciting to see Drew Barrymore, who was in Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye and Firestarter returning to her horror roots, even if it’s more satirical fare.
Meet Joe and Sheila Hammond — no, they very much are not the average couple!
I already have watched all 30 episodes of the three seasons, which again, is something I usually do only after writing a FIRST LOOK, but hey, let’s change with the times. Will there be reviews of all episodes forthcoming? Undecided.
As a mini-review of the entire three seasons of Santa Clarita Diet: the first few episodes were really interesting and super entertaining. As the series waned on, I think it sort of lost its way at times and became a bit too corny. By the end of the third season I can see why Netflix didn’t renew it, but if they change their mind and greenlight a Season 4, I’d probably see where those wild, wacky Hammonds go. Do I recommend watching this, if you haven’t seen yet? Check out the pilot episode to get a great idea what the series will be about.
Some of the screencaps that follow are going to be graphic, so proceed with that in mind…
So what does Drew Barrymore do in the pilot episode?
… ravenous finger eating, which turns into …… a live human feast!
You can see how a long time dedicated horror fan would dig watching this. Even though I’ve been a subscriber to Netflix for many years, I somehow missed catching when it first came out. It’s a little ironically like finding out about a good restaurant in town that you’ve driven by many times and not noticed, then you try it out and it’s good, but not amazing. Is Netflix like this for anybody else?
All three seasons of Santa Clarita Diet are available on Netflix.
According to Google as of April 18, 2020, Netflix has 165 TV shows. Assuming this number are Originals or series they have commissioned to be continued like Black Mirror and doesn’t include TV series they have licensed from others like Star Trek.
I’m more of a movie person — hence the name of our site — but enjoy watching a great TV show from time to time (will never tire rewatching The Twilight Zone!), because they have the ability to extend that entertainment experience much longer than a couple hours.
Back in 2017, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made the surprising statement that, “Our hit ratio is too high right now. I’m almost pushing the content team, ‘We have to take more risk, you have to try more crazy things,’ because we should have a higher cancel rate overall.”
The article linked above links and described the following 10 Netflix TV shows:
Bojack Horseman (2014-2019)
House of Cards (2013-2018)
Jessica Jones (2015-2019)
Mindhunter (2017-2019)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (2017-2018)
Orange is the New Black (2013-2019)
Santa Clarita Diet (2017-2019)
Sense8 (2015-2018)
She’s Gotta Have It (2017-2019)
The OA (2016-2019)
I’ve only watched (briefly) Orange is the New Black. Am familiar with a few others including House of Cards. Would be open to checking out others on the list, particularly Bojack Horseman, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Santa Clarita Diet.
How many of these 10 cancelled Netflix TV shows have you seen? Recommended or not?
Movies, Movies, Movies 