Party Over Here: Cancelled by FOX; No Season Two

Party Over Here TV show on FOX: canceled, no season 2.

Party Over Here TV show on FOX: cancelled; no season two. Pictured: Jessica McKenna, Nicole Byer, and Alison Rich. (Photo Emily Shur/FOX.)

The party’s over. The Party Over Here TV show has been cancelled after its first and only season on FOX. The late-night half-hour sketch comedy series produced by the Emmy Award-winning and Grammy Award-nominated comedy trio The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) and actor/comedian Paul Scheer, who served as showrunner.

Indie Wire reports FOX chose not to renew Party Over Here for a second season. The ten-episode series starred Nicole Byer, Jessica McKenna and Alison Rich.

Party Over Here TV show canceled; no second season. Pictured: Party Over Here TV show-runner Paul Scheer. (Photo: FOX.)

Here is more from Indie Wire:

“It was an effort to try to do something interesting at a low price point with content creators who we like a lot,” said Fox TV Group chairman Dana Walden. “We were hopeful that little elements of the show might go viral.”

But launching the show late in the year proved to be challenging, particularly with so much attention focused other late night shows. “It’s just really hard,” Walden said. “Launching something that competes with ‘Saturday Night Live’ in that space, it’s really hard but we wanted to experiment with it.”

Byer (who now has a new show on MTV), McKenna and Rich are all Upright Citizens Brigade alums. The series, which taped in February at downtown Los Angeles’ Alexandria Hotel, steered clear of current events. Instead, its edgy fare included one sketch where Byer simulated sex with a ghost and a fake TV commercial about “transvaginal mesh.”

Here is how FOX described the Party Over Here TV series, when it ordered the first season:

Skewering everything from pop culture to politics, PARTY OVER HERE will feature sketch comedy shorts, along with in-studio segments filmed in front of a live audience at the Alexandria Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The half-hour series stars newcomers and actress/comedians Nicole Byer (“Girl Code”), Jessica McKenna (“Riot”) and Alison Rich (“Resident Advisors”).

Nicole Byer is one of the breakout stars of the cable hit comedy series “Girl Code.” Byer’s additional acting credits include “Lady Dynamite” and “30 Rock.” Byer and Shasheer Samata (“Saturday Night Live”) wrote and star in the web series “Pursuit of Sexiness.”

Jessica McKenna has studied sketch and improv at The Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), where she is a regular performer. Her television credits include the FOX improv comedy series “Riot,” “The Goldbergs,” “Comedy Bang! Bang!,” “Hot Wives of Las Vegas” and “The Jeselnik Offensive.” McKenna is one-half of the musical comedy duo The Zach and The Jess.

Alison Rich was a staff writer on “Saturday Night Live,” where she was hired after testing for a featured player position. Rich won the IFC “Out of the Box” Award (which came with a blind script offer) and Best Actress Award from the New York Television Festival for the web series “Incognito,” which she created with Andrew Law. Her additional acting credits include the comedy series “Angie Tribeca,” “Life In Pieces” and the HULU original series “Resident Advisors.”

Comprised of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, The Lonely Island coined their name from the cramped West Coast apartment they shared as comic start-ups. They are currently in post-production on their Judd Apatow-produced, Universal Studios feature. The Grammy-nominated and Emmy Award-winning trio are responsible for creating the popular “SNL Digital Shorts,” including, among many others, “D**K In A Box,” “Lazy Sunday” and “I’m On A Boat.” The trio has more than 6.5 million subscribers and more than 1.7 billion views on their YouTube channel, as well as three Platinum singles (“I’m On A Boat,” “Jizz In My Pants” and “I Just Had Sex”) and one Gold single (“Like A Boss”). Their singles, “I’m On A Boat” and “Turtleneck & Chain,” were both nominated for Grammy Awards. The group also collaborated with Shawn Patterson, Joshua Bartholomew and Lisa Harriton to write the song “Everything Is Awesome,” featured in “The Lego Movie,” and performed with Tegan and Sara. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song last year. In 2014, they formed the production company Kablamo!.

PARTY OVER HERE is produced by Kablamo! Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Billy Rosenberg and Paul Scheer serve as executive producers. Scheer also serves as one of the series’ directors.

Party Over Here TV show on FOX: cancelled after one season. Pictured: Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. Known as The Lonely Island the trio co-created Party Over here with Paul Scheer. (Photo: Getty/FOX.)

What do you think? Did you watch season one of the Party Over Here TV series? Do you think it should have been cancelled or renewed for season two? Sound off, below.