Avenue 5 cancelled by HBO after two seasons

Avenue 5 will be headed back to Earth as it’s been confirmed that HBO has officially cancelled the sci-fi comedy series from Veep creator Armando Iannucci.

The series followed the crew of a luxury space cruise ship as it embarked on an eight-week trip through the solar system, only for the accidental death of the Chief Engineer to throw them off course and years away from home. “Going to space with Armando Iannucci has been an incredible journey.  While we will not be moving forward with a third season of Avenue 5, we look forward to many more adventures together,” said an HBO spokeswoman.

Avenue 5 starred Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad, Zach Woods, Rebecca Front, Suzy Nakamura, Lenora Crichlow, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Ethan Phillips. Although HBO quickly renewed the series for a second season, the pandemic pushed production back by more than a year, and the second season arrived nearly three years after the first, which meant that cast’s options had lapsed. So, the cancellation news doesn’t really come as a surprise, especially as Hugh Laurie has moved on to Apple TV+’s Tehran and Armando Iannucci is working on The Franchise with Sam Mendes, a new comedy series that “takes a wry look at superhero movie-making.” Production on the pilot is expected to kick off this spring.

Our own Alex Maidy reviewed Avenue 5 upon its premiere over three years ago, and while he enjoyed the series, it didn’t quite reach Veep levels of comedy. “Avenue 5 doesn’t have the rapid fire delivery of jokes that made Veep so fun to watch,” Maidy wrote. “While Veep’s humor was so vulgar and fast-paced that it often felt unscripted, Avenue 5 never hits the same stride. Once the set up of the series is out of the way, the show begins to speed up the jokes with the third and fourth episodes really showing what the story has to offer. There is enough space humor here to appease scifi fans and enough scatalogical jokes and off color humor to warrant this series airing on HBO, but it doesn’t quite hit the potential that I would have expected from Armando Iannucci. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good, it just isn’t good enough quite yet but it certainly has the potential to be a break out hit.” You can check out the rest of Maidy’s review right here.

Are you sad to see Avenue 5 get cancelled?