Pete Kaczmarek and Nick Morelli consistently get themselves and their clients out of some pretty big jams. Unfortunately, there’s one that they can’t escape. Their TV series, The Defenders, has been cancelled by CBS after one season.
The Defenders follows a pair of Las Vegas lawyers who will do just about anything for their Sin City clients. They often take on cases no one else will touch and try to keep their sanity while doing it. The TV show stars Jerry O’Connell, Jim Belushi, Jurnee Smollett, Tanya Fischer, and Gillian Vigman.
The TV series got off to a decent start with a 2.9 rating in the all-important 18-49 demographic and 12.17 million viewers. In weeks two and three, those numbers started to tumble however with the demo falling 14% and then another 12% in weeks two and three. Airing on Wednesday nights, the ratings kept falling and hit a low of a 1.5 in the demo and 6.8 million.
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Because The Defenders was already registering poor numbers, CBS decided to try it on Friday nights, an evening with fewer viewers. If most fans followed and the show could sustain the Wednesday numbers, CBS would likely have been satisfied.
That didn’t happen and the remaining six installments fell even lower, hitting a 1.1 in the demo. That was a much worse performance than the timeslot’s previous occupant, already-cancelled Medium.
While The Defenders was supposedly still in contention for a second season until recently, most knew it was a long shot at best.
Word is that CBS has now cancelled The Defenders. All 18 produced episodes have aired. The series finale ran on March 11th.
What do you think? Are you sorry that there won’t be a second season for The Defenders?
Wondering where the rest of your shows stand? Check our CBS cancel/renew page.
Image courtesy CBS.
I love this 2010 The Defenders show so much that I’ve googled why it was cancelled. I can’t believe it was replaced by Blue Bloods series which is boring. I’d rather watch “The murder she wrote” series from about 20 years ago or the modern Terra Nova series than Blue Bloods.
The Defenders series had a great, interesting and dramatic story line and actors that really made the serious scenes believable, emotional and immersive. Please make more?
The show was awesome. I guess it was aired at the same time with another more successful show and they lost the battle. Can’t believe it not even for a second that they got canned for being a bad show. It’s been a while now since it was cancelled so I don’t think we’ll ever seen a resuscitation of it. Too bad.
i want season 2
Extremely good show, and Belushi is great as always. Really sad the show did not have a continuation…hope they will re-fire it.
Bring back the Defenders! 🙂
Its been 5 year…..but i just see the dvd of this show for second time. I still cant believed that no season 2. I keep waiting if any of producer will remake or continue this drama. Its been so nice to see it again. I watch Suits too…all season, but i still wait for defender coming again….this drama show what real lawyer should do. Pro bono case, defense the client in real court…..fight for the right things.
I think its time for make another series…..
Just watched this series in England and really enjoyed it, very sad there isn’t a second series
Such a shame this series was cancelled had great potential to be an award winning series. The shows concept was great and the actors were perfect in their respected roles, if this had been produced by the company behind CSI this series would be strong with a mass following and probably in series 9
Great show, great actors ,get it back!!!