Tradecraft: NBC Cancels TAKEN

Deadline reports that NBC has cancelled the Taken TV series after two seasons. The series, based on EuropaCorp's neo-Eurospy film franchise starring Liam Neeson, was retooled for its second season, but the new direction didn't boost viewership the way NBC had hoped. In recent weeks its Friday night ratings had become pretty dire. The network will, at least, air the final episodes that are already in the can. They'll be burned off on Saturday nights at 8pm starting this Saturday, May 26.

Tradecraft: TNT Cancels its Spy Shows Legends and Agent X

In one fell swoop, TNT has disavowed all of its spy shows. After previously cancelling Transporter: The Series, the cable network today (per Deadline) also axed its fun freshman series Agent X, and sophomore Legends. In both cases, this is really too bad. Agent X, starring Sharon Stone and Jeff Hephner, was lots of fun and delivered weekly escapist action in the Alias-vein. Legends, from Homeland and 24 executive producer Howard Gordon, started strong last season but had become absolutely brilliant in its second year after a thorough re-tooling. The Sean Bean spy series based on Robert Littell's novel had become an excellent and worthy companion for Homeland. I will miss this one greatly, and dearly hope that Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime scoops it up for a third season. This series has already shown an amazing ability to survive, surfacing on TNT a year after being passed on by NBC, so anything seems possible....

TNT Cancels Transporter: The Series

The Digital Spy reports (via RenewCancel TV) that Transporter: The Series, which aired in America on TNT, will not be returning for a third season, sadly. The series starred Chris Vance in the role originated on the big screen by Jason Statham in a trio of action-packed neo-Eurospy movies produced by Luc Besson. Frank Spotnitz, who served as showrunner on the show's second season and thoroughly revamped it, told the website that he would love to keep working on Transporter, but blamed poor timing for its low ratings. He also revealed that he hadn't yet seen the latest Transporter movie, The Transporter Refueled, saying, "The truth is, to make it into a TV series we had to change a number of things about the central character, because it was sort of his anonymity and his solo nature that drove the movie series. And in the TV series, because people watch TV for characters, we had to create relationships and dimensionalize him in a way that I don't think they did in the movies that I saw, anyway." Refueled does actually attempt to do that as well, by taking a page (let's face it, more than a page!) from the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade playbook and teaming Ed Skrein's younger Frank Martin with his father, played by Ray Stevenson (Rome). Spotnitz is currently producing the Amazon Prime alternate history series The Man in the High Castle.

It's unclear from Spotnitz's comments if he means that TNT is passing on a third season (which would leave the European/Canadian co-production free to seek out another U.S. partner, like the El Rey Network, where it would be a good fit), or if the European production company Atlantique has decided not to proceed... which would pretty much mean the end of the road. And what a long and circuitous road it's been for this show—nearly as twisty as one of the winding Riviera roads showcased on the series. The show was first announced way back in 2009; it was officially greenlit in late 2010, and in early 2011 it was reported that Cinemax would partner with EuropaCorp to air the series in the United States. Later that year Vance (best known to spy fans from an arc on Burn Notice) was tapped to star as Frank Martin, and subsequently joined by Andrea Osvárt as his handler, Carla, a former CIA operative and a character who didn't appear in the theatrical films. That fall, the trouble started, with the original showrunners departing over creative differences. Before the first season's twelve episodes would wrap, their replacement would also ankle, and production would shut down when Vance was sidelined with an injury. The first trailer came out in the summer of 2012, heralding airdates that fall in Europe and elsewhere, but another year went by with still no announcement of a Cinemax premiere. In August of 2013 it was announced that the cable network had backed out, and the show's international producers were seeking a new U.S. partner. Undaunted by all these setbacks, they were still pressing forward with a second season, and had tapped Spotnitz to oversee a retooling after he had shepherded two hit international action co-productions on Cinemax, Hunted and the first American season of Strike Back. Vance's option had expired, but was renegotiated. Production finally began on the second season at the end of February 2014, shooting in Canada, Morocco and the Czech Republic. TNT (where Vance was a familiar face from a recurring role on Rizzoli & Isles) came on board to air both seasons in the U.S., and last fall that finally happened. Season 2 (which was aired back to back with Season 1 here) ended on a cliffhanger, and we've been waiting ever since to hear if there would be a Season 3. Now I guess it looks like there won't be, which is really too bad. Transporter: The Series would have made a great stablemate with TNT's new escapist spy drama, Agent X.

Happily, both seasons are at least available (and quite cheaply, on Amazon!) on DVD in their full, uncut European versions. (Which means with lots of nudity. Remember, this show was originally bound for Cinemax!) And I recommend them for fans of the Statham movies, fans of the neo-Eurospy genre at large, or fans of daffy action and crazy car stunts in general.

Order Transporter: The Series - Season 1 here.
Order Transporter: The Series - Season 2 here.

Tradecraft: NBC Pulls Allegiance

Apparently NBC has no allegiance to its new spy drama Allegiance. Try as they might, for some reason the networks just can't seem to duplicate the success of FX's excellent hit Cold War spy series The Americans. Last year ABC attempted it with their own Eighties-set miniseries about a KGB mole in the CIA, The Assets. That turned out to be quite a good show, but nobody saw it, and ABC pulled it from the schedule after just two airings. (Fortunately, it can now be streamed in its entirety on Netflix.) Allegiance, another midseason launch, made it for all of three episodes before being pulled. After three under-performing airings, with this week's episode hitting a low 0.8, Deadline reports that the network "is yanking Allegiance from the schedule effective immediately." According to the trade, "It is not an official cancellation but is as close as you can get to one without announcing it." There are currently no plans for the eight unaired episodes. That's too bad, because I actually enjoyed the soapy family spy drama from The Bourne Ultimatum co-writer George Nolfi. Despite its obvious debt to The Americans, Allegiance stood on its own. Its contemporary setting was made all the more relevant thanks to an FBI sting against Russian SVR agents operating in New York just days before the premiere. And the frothy tone set it apart from FX's gritty period drama. I hope those remaining episodes are made available at some point, whether NBC burns them off two at a time on Summer Sunday afternoons like ABC tried (at first) with The Assets, or puts them up On Demand, or just releases them streaming on Netflix down the line (as eventually happened with The Assets). Sadly a DVD set is probably too much to hope for, even though NBC's lesser freshman spy show, State of Affairs (also likely on the chopping block), just got an MOD release.

Tradecraft: Covert Affairs Cancelled

This month brought some most unwelcome news for fans of USA's spy drama Covert Affairs. According to Deadline, the network announced that it's cancelled the series after five seasons. While in some ways the finale of the fourth season seemed like a logical ending point, the fifth season unfortunately concluded with a number of cliffhangers and unanswered questions, intended as seeds for sixth season plotlines. Obviously fans will hope for a movie or miniseries to wrap up these threads, but the trade says that's unlikely. "While that always is a possibility as Covert Affairs producer Universal Cable Prods. has been high on the series and is a sibling to the network, making it happen is usually prohibitively expensive. Therefore, chances for a different conclusion to the series are slim, despite Covert Affairs creators/executive producers Matt Corman and Chris Ord’s hope for a sixth season." It's worth reading the whole story at Deadline, as they go into the interesting financial reasons behind the cancellation. (Among other factors,while the show remained quite popular, it's audience primarily viewed it on DVR rather than live, apparently making it difficult to monetize.) Personally, I'm quite sorry to see it go. Covert Affairs remained a consistently entertaining spy series, and one of the few that actually filmed on location around the world (a factor that made it expensive to film) as opposed to the more common Alias-style "Burbank-as-Barcelona" approach. And NBC's State of Affairs is a poor substitute when it comes to CIA blondes having Affairs.

Tradecraft: Matador Cancelled

This is very disappointing news! After initially announcing that it was already renewed for a second season before the first one even started airing, El Rey Network have changed their minds and cancelled their entertaining spy series Matador. Deadline reports that the series, billed as a "Latino James Bond" (but really more of a Latino Alias) did fairly well in America, but failed to find international buyers. That's really too bad, because Matador was a lot of fun. It was an entertaining, action-oriented, somewhat fantastical throwback spy series. And it came from a roster of heavy hitters, including Alias producers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who recycled some of their Alias mythology by mixing spies with mystical artifacts) and El Rey founder Robert Rodriguez. The news of its cancellation comes on top of the sad news of the premature death of one of its stars, Elizabeth Pena. I will miss Matador.

Tradecraft: ABC Pulls The Assets

In some particularly discouraging news, Deadline reports that that ABC has pulled their fact-based Cold War miniseries The Assets after just two airings. It's disturbing because after a shaky but promising premiere, The Assets had really come into its own with the strong second episode. (It's somewhat tempting to compare the network to the notorious CIA traitor Aldrich Ames, focus of the miniseries, as they have both now killed The Assets.) I had hoped that an eight episode miniseries would run its course no matter what, but ratings went from dismal to... well, according to the trade blog, the worst... ever. In the history of network television. Even the normally cynical Deadline jumped to its defense, however, pointing out that the miniseries (which was slotted into the highly competitive Thursday night 10pm slot while the top-rated Scandal was on hiatus) had no stars (well, no American stars anyway) and received no marketing push from the network. There's no word yet on whether the remaining six episodes will be burnt off on Saturday nights or made available On Demand or on the network's website (where you can currently watch the first two) or what. While the upshot of the mole hunt to expose Ames is a matter of historical record, I still hope to see the rest of The Assets! In the first episode, Ames seemed so obviously a traitor that it was difficult to foresee how it would take eight episodes and nearly a decade to catch him. (Sadly, by most accounts, that's a fairly accurate portrayal, and blame lies with the CIA and not the writers.) But in Episode 2, the story expanded to include the hunts for other moles of that era (who served as a smoke screen for Ames), and Episode 3 promised us the race to catch Edward Lee Howard. Additionally, the choice to focus on the Russian CIA assets Ames exposed to the KGB looked set to provide lots of meaty material for those remaining six hours. I liked what I saw enough that I'm still hoping for an eventual DVD release, because I would like to have The Assets on my shelf.

Nikita Renewed; Missing Cancelled

Good news for Nikita fans! Deadline reports that despite low ratings, the CW has renewed the Maggie Q assassin drama for a third season. I'm very happily surprised. The pick-up comes despite the fact that Nikita has averaged lower ratings than Ringer and Secret Circle, two shows the network did cancel. Additionally (and far less surprisingly), CBS has renewed the hit J.J. Abrams/Jonah Nolan Equalizer-meets-Batman drama Person of Interest, starring Jim Caviezel as a former CIA operative now using his specialized skill set in the private sector (for eccentric billionaire Michael Emerson) to prevent violent crimes and atone for some of the damage he may have caused during his spy career.

Unfortunately, with the good news comes bad news for fans of current spy television: TV Line reports that ABC has cancelled Missing, arguably the best network spy show since Alias. That's really too bad, because Missing has only gotten better since its pilot (reviewed here), and I've been thoroughly enjoying the top-notch action and fabulous European locations week after week. On top of that, Ashley Judd made a much better spy than I ever would have guessed, and the supporting cast is also first rate. Hopefully the first (and only) season will wrap up with a satisfying resolution of some sort. At least the DVDs have already been announced, so spy fans will be able to enjoy this single season for years to come. It's definitely one I'll re-watch from time to time. ABC has also officially cancelled its Sixties-set spying stewardess drama Pan Am. There had been some hope that show might live on despite low ratings in America (which led to it being pulled from the schedule a while ago) because it's very, very popular overseas. (In fact, it just received the coveted Rose d'Or award in Switzerland!) That always seemed like a long shot though.