ABC cancels ‘Wicked City’ after three episodes

What is interesting about this particular headline is that “Wicked City” is the first show to actually be pulled from the schedule this season, which is clearly a headline that networks have been wanting to avoid.

ABC officially cancelled their new series Wicked City after airing only three episodes on Friday (November 13), according to Deadline.

The first season focuses on two L.A. detectives (Jeremy Sisto, Gabriel Luna) as they search for a pair of romantically-linked serial killers (Ed Westwick, Erika Christensen) terrorizing the Sunset Strip in 1982.

Despite this, there were grand plans for “Wicked City” as ABC hoped to capitalize on the gore-tinged anthology trend spearheaded by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s “American Horror Story” franchise on FX. Production on the show will stop after completing Episode 8, which is now filming.

There is no word yet as to what the network will use this timeslot for, but we know that there are a few episodes of “Beyond the Tank” that are waiting to air. Wicked City’s tiny same-day numbers (1.7 million viewers on Tuesday) may have made it harder to wait.

News of Wicked City’s demise comes after NBC renewed freshman Blindspot for a second season – making the 2015-16 season a rare instance when a first-year show was renewed before one was canceled. But Wicked City is the only one to be pulled from the schedule. ABC’s Blood & Oil and NBC’s The Player have also been trimmed and are presumably short for this world.

The news should be a tad depressing for fans of Forever, a show that aired Tuesdays at 10pm on ABC last season and was cancelled after getting a full-season order. The o. 4 18-49 rating was the lowest number for a Big 4 original telecast this fall and was the lowest-rated program on an English-language broadcast network on Tuesday.