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 love the show too. I haven’t forgiven ABC for the way they left it with Kyle XY and if they do that to me again with DG that will be it for me. I won’t bother watching another network serial again.
Did anybody notice that this is an almost complete rip off of the BBC documentary / drama ‘Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets’ down to the design of the ship, the mission control, some of the characters and even some of the events? So what the writers of this show are basically doing is just add some locker room girltalk to that documentary and the result is Defying Gravity. ‘Two shows about the exploration of the Solar System will have similar design and similar events’ isn’t a good enough excuse for this blatant plaigarism.
This is a really good show. I am checking websites to see if it will continue in the fall, which it appears that it won’t. It’s such a shame,… seems like the the shows that I really like, and “get into” always get cancelled! I hope ABC gets their heads screwed on straight, and at least brings this show back at mid-season.
I like the show but then it seems any show I like gets cancelled! Summer shows seem to have trouble getting started who watches TV in the summer? I just wish if they were going to cancel it they would just come out and say so and be done with it. I think that the networks are so caught up in the American Idol, and all the game shows that they can forget about adding new shows that make you think it might cost then money and in the end they wonder why people move over to cable. I think… Read more »
i loove the show i love all the shows on ABC and then all of a sudden ill go to watch the show the next week and it has been cancelled. im over fallin in love with ABC shows because they always seem to cancel them mid season. at least let it finish the season. i think this is a great show. i like it alot better than other shows that are on tv. Please ABC keep this one if not im gonna lose my love for ABC shows and stop watching ABC all together. This will have been the… Read more »
i say cancel it. 13 episodes have been made. Too late to change the unpopular format. I don’t think this cast has the chemistry or energy, having to be such a close band in space. Interesting story development is lacking. All the women look like they’ve had cheap plastic surgery. I think re-runs of brothers and sisters will garner higher ratings.
I was wanting to watch re-runs of B&S when this came on… I gave it a shot, but did not like it. First the indian guy going bezerk sucked. The “geologist” was unbelievable as a character. And for that black-haired dude who went up into space after punching his mission commander…. them just letting that go without any reprimands (ala Captain Kirk demotion from Admiral to permanent Captain) and maybe taking a look at the darker side of that impulsive cowboy behavior (how it ruined his chances for being first pick in the space draft, and how it was a… Read more »
I love the show, I just happened upon it when looking through the guide and started to watch it and it pulled me in. I have watched every episode and I think it would be a sin if it was cancelled. I agree that if there was some advertisment for it maybe more people would have tuned in! I am not a huge TV watcher, I only dedicate myself to about 2 shows a season, so I think the fact that I picked this one as one of the two I watch says a lot. Please don’t cancel it!!
Well, if ABC would advertise the show… or even let people know it was on the air I think that might help a tiny bit. For some reason ABC picks up the US rights to this show and then slots it with NO ADVERTISING, no promotion and 85% of the people you tell about it have never heard of it. The only good news for fans of the show is that it’s not an ABC production but a multi-national production so even though ABC is ******** the show and the people making it there’s a good chance it will live… Read more »
I’m not a fan of biased journalism.
The series is very well written and has skilled actors.
ABC can do what ever they like, the Canadian audiences like it and that’s the reason it won’t be canceled.
Keep it, I liked it and thought it was visually beautiful and I am also a fan of some science fiction. I never watch any reality tv and will watch re-runs of other shows before I do. I really would like this show to succeed somewhere in the vast amount of channel space we have out there.
I agree that changing the day will up the numbers. Late at night on a sunday? Come on! You can’t expect people that have to wake up and go to work early in the morning to stay up and watch it. I think that its a great show and i’m hooked on it already. I think they just need to change their strategy on getting more viewers. Change the day, possibly the time, get more advertisement and watch the numbers grow.
Picked up the opening series free on itunes, must say it is a must see!
This is a great show. Improvements needed but still its totally something new. MORE PUBLICITY will help!!!
Keep it. Its never good to pull a show after the first and sometimes even the second season. Its pointless. Most of the reason people don’t watch a show isn’t its quality level. People like watching quality shows, they just have to know about them. If this does poorly its because it wasn’t advertised successfully. Its on Sunday nights…on a terrible timeslot. Put it on Friday night and people will have something to watch. Thats the night I can’t find anything on TV to watch. I’ve been watching it on Hulu, and its pretty good. You want this show to… Read more »