Hulu and NBC both announced series cancellations this week—and two very different book-based shows didn’t make the cut.
Harlots premiered on Hulu in 2017 and ran for three seasons, but the subscription streaming service chose not to renew it for a fourth, according to Deadline. The show was inspired by Hallie Rubenhold’s 2005 nonfiction book The Covent Garden Ladies, whose subject was Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, an anonymously written, late 18th-century directory of London sex workers. Hulu’s series starred Minority Report’s Samantha Morton and Phantom Thread’s Lesley Manville—both excellent—as fictional rival madams, and the ensemble cast, which included Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay, always made the show compulsively watchable. Its three seasons remain available on Hulu, and are certainly worth a watch.
NBC announced the cancellation of its series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, as reported by TVLine. The show, which premiered this past January, was based on Jeffrey Deaver’s 1997 serial-killer thriller The Bone Collector, which also inspired a 1999 film of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.
The show starred Russell Hornsby—formerly of NBC’s popular supernatural detective show, Grimm—in the title role as a disabled forensics expert who’s after a serial killer, The Bone Collector, who’s resurfaced after a three-year absence. He teams up with New York City cop Amelia Sachs, played by Midnight, Texas’ Arielle Kebble.
Deaver’s novel was the first in a long-running series, which includes such books as 2013’s The Kill Room and 2014’s The Skin Collector; its 14th entry, The Cutting Edge, was published in 2018.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
