TV News Wrap-Up: ‘One Day at a Time’ Canceled By Pop TV, Joss Whedon Exits HBO’s ‘The Nevers,’ ‘The Expanse’ Gets Sixth and Final Season

Happy Thanksgiving weekend everybody! As the year starts to officially wind down, we’re taking a look at some of the highs and lows of TV news. 

While some shows have been canceled, some have been renewed with final seasons, and one is being shopped around. Plus, more are in development with some names you may recognize.

Find out more with this week’s TV news wrap-up. 

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Amazon has given The Expanse an early renewal for Season 6 and announced that it will be the show’s last.

• The renewal comes three weeks before the debut of Season 5.
• Cas Anvar is the one cast member not returning after a string of sexual misconduct allegations this summer.
• Deadline speculates that production on the sixth and final season will begin in January with a target start date subject to change amid pandemic conditions. 
• “From the moment we committed to bringing this show to life up until this final season, we have worked tirelessly to honor the vision of the writers,” said Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, co-CEOs and co-founders of Alcon Television Group and executive producers of The Expanse. “…It continues to be an honor and privilege to work with this team. We also would like to thank Amazon for their continuing support to help us tell this story to its fullest and to bring The Expanse to a global audience.”

Glee alum Amber Riley will be returning to television in the NBC musical comedy Dream.

• Deadline reports Riley will headline and produce the single-camera comedy in development at NBC from writer-producer Lisa Muse Bryant (Black-ish), producer Neil Meron, and Universal TV where Meron is based.
• Dream details the life of her former teen mom who pursues her dream of becoming a singer after her son graduates from college.

Utopia has been canceled by Amazon after one season. 

• Deadline reports that the series premiered on September 25th to so-so reviews and had a quiet run. 
• The series “…follows a group of young adults who meet online that are mercilessly hunted by a shadowy deep state organization after they come into possession of a near-mythical cult underground graphic novel. Within the comic’s pages, they discover the conspiracy theories that may actually be real and are forced into the dangerous, unique, and ironic position of saving the world.”
• The series starred John Cusack, Sasha Lane, and Rainn Wilson and was written by Gillian Flynn.
• It was previously in the works at HBO with David Fincher and Gillian Flynn at the helm, but it unraveled after HBO wouldn’t agree to the budget.

One Day at a Time‘s Isabella Gomez will headline Head of the Class reboot for HBO Max.

• HBO Max ordered a pilot and five additional scripts in May. 
• The series hails from American Vandal writers Amy Pocha and Seth Cohen, Bill Lawrence and his Doozer Productions; and Warner Bros. Television, which produced the original series.
• Gomez will play Alicia Adams, a first-time teacher who attempts to encourage, high-achieving high school students to stop worrying about grades and start experiencing life. 
• Deadline reports that Alicia Adams is described as the “…whip-smart, funny, blunt high school teacher we all wish we had. A former GPA junkie, Alicia thought she had the world all figured out when she was in school. Teaching for the first time, Alicia’s is figuring out what she really wants in life.”
• Gomez’s casting reveals a genderswap. The lead in the popular 1980s sitcom was originally portrayed by Howard Hesseman.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste joins Jack Ryan Season 3.

• According to Deadline, Jean-Baptiste has been tapped for a new series regular role opposite John Krasinski. Her character will be Elizabeth Wright, the Chief of Station.
• There is currently no production start date as of yet.

Joss Whedon has exited the HBO sci-fi series The Nevers.

• Whedon was supposed to co-write and direct the series about a gang of Victorian women who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies, and a mission to change the world. 
• “We have parted ways with Joss Whedon. We remain excited about the future of The Nevers and look forward to its premiere in the summer of 2021,” HBO said in a statement on Wednesday obtained by Deadline.
• Whedon went on to state, “This year of unprecedented challenges has impacted my life and perspective in ways I could never have imagined, and while developing and producing The Nevers has been a joyful experience, I realize that the level of commitment required moving forward, combined with the physical challenges of making such a huge show during a global pandemic, is more than I can handle without the work beginning to suffer. I am genuinely exhausted and am stepping back to martial my energy towards my own life, which is also at the brink of exciting change. I am deeply proud of the work we have done; I’m grateful to all my extraordinary cast and collaborators, and to HBO for the opportunity to shape yet another strange world. The Nevers is a true labor of love, but after two-plus years of labor, love is about all I have to offer. It will never fade.” 
• According to Deadline, the drama is still set to air in the summer of 2021 and would have marked the first series created solely by Whedon since the 2009 series Dollhouse.

One Day at a Time has been canceled again; Sony Pictures TV will shop the series around.

• Two years after Netflix canceled the reboot of Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time, Pop TV has canceled the series again. 
• Deadline reports that the network behind the reboot will shop it around to other outlets. ‘
• The decision to cancel the series may be more complicated than it appears, “Following the merger of CBS and Viacom, Pop moved from the CBS to the Viacom side of the company, joining Chris McCarthy’s Entertainment & Youth division. Pop has since pulled away from original scripted programming; following the end of Schitt’s Creek, One Day at a Time was the network’s last remaining scripted series.”
• Earlier this year, the fourth season of the series was cut short due to the current health crisis. The season was simulcast on both PopTV and TV Land and later saw a broadcast debut on CBS.
• Sony Pictures TV plans to exhaust every possible option in finding the series a new home and are particularly excited by possible Season 5 storylines.

NBC is developing a TV series based on the 2000 film Finding Forrester.

• According to Deadline, the series will hail from The Chi co-executive producers TJ Brady & Rasheed Newson, director Tim Story, NBA star Stephen Curry and his Unanimous Media as well as Sony Pictures Television.
• The film follows a black teenager played by Rob Brown who is a gifted writer and basketball player who gets a prestigious private school scholarship and befriends a reclusive Scottish writer played by Sean Connery.
• This adaptation will change up the mentor character played by Connery and will examine the cost of success and the price of redemption by telling the story of two Black writers: “a homeless 16-year-old orphan who leverages his basketball skills to hustle his way into an ultra-competitive elite boarding school and a reclusive lesbian author whose career was ruined by a public scandal.”

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What’s your favorite bit of TV news from this past week? 

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