There is bad news for fans of Obliterated, as Netflix has cancelled the show after just one season. The show comes from the same creators that bought us the Netflix hit Cobra Kai: Josh Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald. After a tricky start where the show didn’t perform as well as Netflix had hoped, they announced Obliterated‘s cancellation three months after its release.
The show’s premise follows an elite special operations team who work together to prevent a terrorist organisation from blowing up Las Vegas. After a successful mission, they celebrate with a night on the town fueled by an abundance of alcohol, sex and drugs. Hungover and bewildered, the team is horrified to discover that the bomb they stopped was actually a decoy and they have to scramble together despite their intoxications to work as a team to try and fight the threat.
The show, which stars Shelley Hennig, Nick Zano and C. Thomas Howell, landed on Netflix on 30 November 2023. It made the worldwide top ten list of English-language speaking series for six weeks with mixed reviews, with many highlighting the satirical nature of the show. It went on to achieve a 74% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but some critics still went on to dub it “the worst show of the year.”
Originally, the show was created for American network TBS (owned by Warner Bros) where it received a straight to series order in 2019. This later fell through, and in turn the script became a free agent, with Netflix taking the project on in May 2022.
Netflix has been criticised in the past for cancelling shows after one season, such as Spinning Out, an ice skating drama which performed well for its depiction of mental health, and Resident Evil, an adaptation from the much loved, popular video game. Decisions to cancel shows on the streaming service always create controversy for fans and customers of Netflix as the demand for more shows grows higher every day. As for the creators, they continue to work with Netflix for their final season of Cobra Kai.
Although season one of Obliterated has faced cancellation, you can still stream the first season on Netflix.
Words by Maisie Hancox
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