Granted, this news has probably been a long time in coming, but it's still a bummer:
Men in Trees has been officially canceled after two years of life in Elmo, AK.
Of course, that's two years of airing on three different nights in numerous different time slots, with two long breaks — one when its first season came to an early end, another when ABC decided to save episodes of the show rather than air them during the
writers' strike — in between. Not the easiest way to get a following, that's for sure.
These days, it seems like the first move for a network series that's in danger of being canceled is to find a cable network or other partner that's willing to take it on. See: Law & Order: Criminal Intent moving to USA from NBC last year, or
Friday Night Lights trying to get a deal with DirecTV to bring it back.
So I guess it's no surprise that ABC wanted to shop its low-rated
Men in Trees and
October Road to another network.
Remember when ABC had a show called
Men in Trees? You can be forgiven if you don't recall. The show has been shuffled around and treated more strangely than most, moving from Fridays to Thursdays and back again, being pulled before the end of its first season, and then finally resurfacing in October — only to leave again in December, despite having plenty of episodes to get through the
writers' strike.
ABC kicks off its new Friday night lineup tonight with the premiere of a new show,
"Women's Murder Club," and the return of an old favorite,
"Men in Trees."
It pains me to recommend a show that airs at the same time as my beloved
"Friday Night Lights," but "Women's Murder Club" is a pretty solid show. It's based on
a series of books by James Patterson, and it centers on a sassy crew of women in various law enforcement roles solving crimes in San Francisco. It's not something I'd watch on a weekly basis, but the cast is appealing, the mystery in the pilot episode was reasonably compelling, and it has a built-in stable of stories to draw from.
