ABC: Renewed and Cancelled

We round up the cancellation and renewal orders for ABC’s drama’s and comedies with Scrubs and FlashForward officially dead while Desperate Housewives and the “re-imaged” V confirmed as returning for new seasons.

Renewed: First off let’s start with those dramas and comedies that were almost guaranteed to be returning for another season. First up is Desperate Housewives which is still performing strongly for ABC and attracting talent such as Julie Benz and John Barrowman to the cast. The next season of Desperate Housewives will see the full return of Mark Mosses as the murderous Paul Young, as part of the regular cast, and its been strongly hinted that actress Harriet Samson Harris will also return as Felicia Tillman. However, it’s now unlikely that actress Dana Delany will reprise her role of Katherine on Desperate Housewives as ABC has picked up her pilot Body of Evidence for a full season. Also back for new seasons will be Grey’s Anatomy and spin-off series Private Practice along with soapy drama Brothers & Sisters – although for a shortened 18 episode season.

The Nathan Fillion fronted series Castle will return for a second season as well Cougar Town, Dancing with the Stars, The Middle, Modern Family and The Bachelor. ABC has also handed a second season order to its re-imaging of V which has had more than a rocky road to air. The series has seen several show-runners take the helm of the show while script rewriters were order, production shut down briefly and ABC held back the majority of the episodes for broadcast this year after its premier in the Autumn. However, in the end despite shaky ratings V performed better than FlashForward and ABC opted to renew it. The second season of V is likely to run to 13 episodes.

Cancelled: As we stated above FlashForward has officially been cancelled by ABC. When the series premiered last year it was widely tipped to be the new Lost and ABC had such high hopes for the series. It started out so well for FlashForward with a strong premier and subsequent episodes also rated well but then it all turned sour as audiences switched off. The series went on hiatus and hew show-runners were brought onboard to try and turn around its fortunes. The continual drop in ratings, against a rise in ratings for V, sealed its fate and ABC passed on ordering a second season. Also axed is Scrubs which transferred from NBC to ABC for a series that saw most of the stars of the sitcom absent, appearing in just a handful of episodes. Unsurprisingly ABC has decided to cancel the series after discovering its revamp just wasn’t what the viewers wanted. Also axed by ABC is: Better off Ted, The Deep End, The Forgotten, Hank, Romantically Challenged with Ugly Betty cancelled earlier in the season and Lost drawing to a close this season in a pre-arranged deal with the producers of the series.