ABC’s new outer-space drama debuted on Sunday night. Will Defying Gravity be allowed to complete its mission or, like so many shows before it, be lost in space?
Defying Gravity follows the adventures of eight international astronauts as they fly a spaceship named Antares. On a top-secret mission, their lives are being recorded and telecast on Earth as part of a documentary. Despite the fact that the crewmembers wear libido-suppressing devices, there are plenty of romantic entanglements.
The show features the talents of Andrew Airlie, Christina Cox, Paula Garces, Laura Harris, Peter Howitt, Florentine Lahme, Karen LeBlanc, Ron Livingston, Ty Olsson, Zahf Paroo, Eyal Podell, Maxim Roy, Dylan Taylor, and Malik Yoba.
The sci-fi drama’s storyline is strangely similar to the failed pilot for Virtuality that aired a month ago. Defying Gravity is a Canadian series that’s co-produced by CTV, Omni Film Productions Limited, and Fox Television Studios. Filming has been completed on all 13 episodes of season one and Defying Gravity is currently airing in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.
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The show has been pitched as “Grey’s Anatomy in space” but unfortunately it hasn’t attracted the same level of viewership for ABC. Defying Gravity debuted on Sunday with a pair of episodes and was outperformed by competition of predominately repeats. The first hour attracted merely 3.83 million viewers and only a 1.1/3 rating/share in the 18-49 demographic. The second hour dropped to 3.56 million while the demo numbers stayed the same.
Defying Gravity moves to its regular timeslot of 10pm this Sunday night. Based on these numbers and the expected drop in ratings for the show’s second night, it’s very doubtful that ABC will continue to air the series for very long.
One has to wonder if ABC really expected the series to last very long anyway. As of now, the network has only scheduled some of the 13 episodes. By the time that Brothers & Sisters returns for its fourth season, at most only nine episodes of Defying Gravity will have aired.
Whether ABC intends to move the show to a new night (normally Saturday but there’s college football coming) or pull it altogether remains to be seen. Either way, with numbers like these, it’s inconceivable that the show will be coming back for another year on ABC.
What do you think? Should the show have a future or should ABC just pull the plug and cancel it already?
Image courtesy ABC.
I think fans of these types of shows are too few in numbers to warrent the budgets that these quality of shows require. The unknown factor is how devout are these fans? I would say they are the most devout to their shows. Advertisers know it as well. Major networks just need the return on investment too quickly, as do many companies in this day and age. I do think that SyFy network could make this show a hit in a ratings sort of way, being as they have the audience (in mind set and the numbers necessary) to keep… Read more »
Episode 9 was the best episode yet. No soap, good drama, revelations galore and it actually built up interest for episode 10. It might be too late already but who knows.
PS: Somebody needs to kill Paula before she turns space evangelist and “cleanses” evrybody else’s souls with a shotgun.
I think it is a great show. You can watch dancing with Tom Delay or something good like this show. Of course it will take a bit for us Sifi people to find a really good show on regular tv. I hope they don’t cancel it before most people that like this kind of work do find it and bring ratings up.. I just don’t watch network tv anymore but happened to have my DVR catch it.
A show like this need time to build an audience. This show is not about teenage-male action or special effects but about cerebral sci-fi and mature drama. The right people will find this show and become a very loyal viewers — probably mostly over the internet say via hulu.com NOT on broadcast TV at 10pm on Sundays or whenever ABC can fit it in to the schedule. ABC: You can’t expect to build an audience without a regular time slot or with just 8 episodes.
I really would not like to see this show cancelled. Every since the switch to DTV I have not to been able to recieve the ABC signal. Therefore I have not been able to watch the show when aired by the network. I have to tune through HULU. I am a huge sci-fi and space travel fan. Most of the shows I watch do air on other networks. The only two shows I watch on ABC are “LOST” and now “Defying Gravity”. Since this is the last season of LOST I was hoping to see what Defying Gravity had to… Read more »
Why would abc cancel something that is interesting and fun to watch…OH! wait…they are just plain s…id…well, as usual they let the critics decide what must of want to watch…no wonder we all surf all evening trying to find something of interest to watch…why don’t they let us decide…plus did they do any advertising about this series…no…they just plopped it down and expected it to take hold…sort of like setting a plant on top of the soil and expecting the roots to reach down and work…what dopes…
I’m sick of the cancellation of great television and the upsurge in ridiculous Reality TV. Will the networks ever keep a show that “NORMAL” America likes? Doubtful.
What a shame. This is ONLY show I watch on regular TV. I had to bend backwards to find episode 9 in the internet. This is a good show, good acting and great plot. I don’t know what to say. I was watching Discovery channel’s show on the Hubble telescope. Someone had the smart idea of pointing Hubble to a spec of “empty” space and let it rip with photos. What came back was a mouth-dropping series of pictures showing billions of galaxies in a spec of outer space….Every day a new planet is discovered orbiting around a star far… Read more »
LOVE it, LOVE it!!!! Please DO NOT cancel this amazing show. It has a thrilling and exciting plot. I not only watch it when it comes on sunday, but i also DVR it, so that i can watch it again. I would buy the tv series on dvd. It needs to be shown on a better day at a much better time.
Come on give this show a chance! It will gain ratings, this is a quality show and believe it or not there is still a market for that. It just needs time for the word of mouth to catch up.
i think this show is great, its exciting and has a good story. i think if abc would put the show on a better time slot and day it would get more ratings. most people on sundays are getting ready for work and don’t sit and watch a 10:00 show. also the show had practically no advertising, with only a few commercials before the season started.
This is a well written show and it just needs time to build. Station want everything overnight now. Instead of cancelling play it 2 nights a week and promote it more.
With support this show will be a success.Does anyone have a brain at network anymore.
Fly by night tv will always fail. Balls up executives. Though provoking TV takes time.
don’t cancel defying gravity — it’s a good show and needs time to build an audience.
I would just like to add my voice to those supporting the show. It seems to me that the costs of production have already been invested why not give word of mouth some time? It could be used as a late season replacement similar to LOST or MEDIUM. I don’t know how networks get their numbers but nobody asked me.
Ok… the show is interesting but some of the characters really suck and the plot is so dull at times… however, I was very curious to see where it was leading… canceling it now is a bad move… give it a chance to complete.