It looks like the axe has fallen for the Paul Haggis/Bobby Moresco drama The Black Donnellys. But does it have to be replaced by a reality show?
The Black Donnellys follows the story of four young Donnelly brothers — a clan of Catholic Irish-American siblings who are involved in organized crime in New York’s infamous Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The story is told by unreliable narrator and Donnelly childhood friend named Joey “Ice Cream” while being incarcerated. The series stars Jonathan Tucker, Thomas Guiry, Olivia Wilde, Billy Lush, Michael Stahl-David, Kirk Acevedo and Keith Nobbs.
The series debuted on NBC on February 26, 2007 and took the place of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on Monday nights. The series’ initial half hour did well (10 million) but viewership fell off significantly in the second half hour (6 million). The series’ initial hour ranked #50 for the week. The subsequent episodes lost viewers and attracted as few as 5.5 million.
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While many hoped that a Donnelly dismissal would mean the return of Studio 60, NBC has other plans. The Real Wedding Crashers will debut at 10pm on Monday nights beginning April 23rd, just in time for May sweeps. It seemed like the Crashers reality show would air on Sunday nights but, NBC execs like the series enough to give it the benefit of a post-Heroes debut.
Unless NBC pulls the series even earlier, only eight episodes of Donnellys will have aired on network TV. The series’ third episode, entitled “God is a Comedian Playing to an Audience Afraid to Laugh,” was considered too violent for network TV and was released as an NBC.com exclusive.
The network has ordered 13 episodes and its unknown at this point what will become of the remaining four segments. They may air over the summer or could be released as online exclusives.
Whether we get to see the rest or not, it looks unlikely the series will be back for a new season in the Fall. NBC will announce their Fall schedule next month. Stay tuned! 
UPDATE: NBC has now pulled Donnellys’ last scheduled episode due to low ratings. The unaired episodes will be made available on NBC.com, presumably on a weekly basis.
I can not believe that this show was cancelled.
I was telling everybody who hadn’t seen it about it. They were looking forward to getting just as hooked as I was!
UGH! TALK ABOUT A BAD DECISION NBC! ARE U KIDDING ME!!
NOOOOOOOO! PLEASE tell me this isn’t true!!!! I LOVE THIS SHOW absolutley LOVE IT! I think it’s AMAZING!!! And if this is true i REALLY hope that some other station picks it up! I LOVE THE BLACK DONNELLY’S !!!!!!!! DON’T CANCEL THEM!!!!!!!
This is bogus…….I wish my cable provider would just black out NBC. What kind of dipsh*ts replace the Donnellys with f*%@ing more reality TV
This is a great show. I’m seriously sick of the “reality” crap that they’re shoving down our throats. The Wedding Crashers? Are you serious, please give us a break! Ashton can take his bullsh*t shows and shove them up the asses of those dumbass big-wigs at NBC. I hope that show fails miserably! I’ve had enough of the lack of imagination that it takes to invent these stupid reality shows. And all of the “celeb-reality” retards that these shows produce. They finally do it right with The Black Donnelly’s and then they kick us in the stomach by canceling it.… Read more »
This is a great series. Move it out of NBC, and give it to FX or SPIKE or HBO or CW or some other network that will
do it justice. NBC doesn’t deserve to handle good TV since this proves that the goldmine of Heroes was out of sheer luck, and not because of anything NBC could take credit for.
NBC,
I hope this is just a test to see how loyal we are to the show. Please bring it back during the summer! Don’t forget Sopranos is done and this could be “the next Genaration’…
i love the show i hate reality t.v. hate hate hate this show is the irish sopranos nbc must be friggen nuts to pull it
if nbc put more money into trailers for the show im sure alot more ppl would watch i hope the sell it to a diffrent net work
I wrot an e-mail to NBC complaining about them pulling the Black Donnelly’s and the response I got back was just a stock, “we receive too many e-mails to respond to each one” and went on to suggest I check ther Q&A….. So, yeah NBC really cares about its viewers!
TBD’s had no chance to develop and gain and audience, although personally, everyone I know watched it! The move was premature and ridiculous IMO!
Guys..can we have a bit of common sense here… the show got cancelled not because it was a bad show … Im sure most of us realize that it got cancelled because it had bad ratings… so you cannot really blame the network for cancelling the show, im upset because im a big fan of the show too, but it just makes sense, the only thing you can do is hope by some miracle as Paul Haggis is probably too that the ratings for the remaining episodes of the show by some miracle gets high enough ratings to impress the… Read more »
NBC, fire the c**ksuckers that are in charge of programming. They are morons.
The Black Donnellys renewed my interest in this pathetic network(NBC). Whoever is in charge of NBC needs to fire the whole damn team.
Please for the love of Television sell this show to a network that doesnt suck.
The Black Donnellys is an amazing show and I think NBC is stupid for not even giving it a chance.. Plus, ya their airing it on NBC.com but only Americans can watch it.. What about Canadians??
SAVE THE BLACK DONNELLYS!
Great Great show- with intelligent plots, good acting, and finally something new on tv to look forward to… what a shame that there’s all this crap on tv and they take this off after hardly a month’s viewing. Pathetic
Really gonna try and boycott NBC and mail every network i can to pick up the black donnellys!
I can’t believe they pulled the show, that is the best show I’ve ever seen on tv. I couldn’t wait every week to watch the donnellys. Unbelievable! I hate NBC now, I hope FOX picks up the show FOX always has better shows.