After two seasons, the queer pirate romcom starring Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby was cancelled by HBO’s Max earlier this month – and its fans quickly mobilised. They raised more than US$21,000 for the campaign, which was used to purchase a billboard in Times Square and have a plane fly over Hollywood with a banner reading “Save Our Flag Means Death”. They also flooded Max’s social media, phone lines and customer feedback inboxes en masse, and launched a petition that has just under 80,000 signatures at time of writing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2019, a woman named Emperial Young went on an eight-day hunger strike outside the Netflix building in New York, protesting against the streaming giant’s decision to cancel the cult hit TV show The OA.
After two seasons, the queer pirate romcom starring Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby was cancelled by HBO’s Max earlier this month – and its fans quickly mobilised.
They also flooded Max’s social media, phone lines and customer feedback inboxes en masse, and launched a petition that has just under 80,000 signatures at time of writing.
“It’s been great to be involved in, not just to see everyone’s dedication, but how creative and hilarious some community members are in their tactics, which span from ‘respectful and sincere’ to ‘fairly unhinged’ – in a good way,” McKenzie says.
In 2023 alone, cancelled shows included Disney+’s Willow, Netflix’s Shadow and Bone and Mindhunter, Paramount’s Star Trek: Prodigy and Max’s Gossip Girl, to name just a handful.
Anne With an E fans used many of the same tricks as Our Flag Means Death, including buying billboards and social media strategies; they even had Ryan Reynolds tweeting his support.
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That’s *some *dedication! I liked the show, but I’m also lazy, so…I hope it works!
If you need some more island Rhys Darby in your life, there’s a great TBS show called Wrecked where he’s a plane crash survivor in modern times.
It’s not streaming anymore, but my buddy Stede said anything can be found on the high seas.
It’s a highly underrated show.
Not to mention it features Whitest Kids U’ Know’s very own Zach “gallon of PCP” Cregger.
Fucking hell, how can people not realise that less is more?
Look at all the classic sitcoms. Did they get strung out for 20 series? No, they stopped
Look at the reviews on IMDb for British shows, almost every one is “Oh my gaaad the Briddish make the best shows, but I wish they were laaaanger”
They’re better because they’re shorter, you daft cunt
Quality over quantity. However, I think 2 seasons is too short. I’m in the 4-5 seasons camp, especially if there are less than 10 eps each season.
I think two seasons is plenty if they only have two seasons’ worth of story to tell. I think trying to aim for arbitrary episode/season counts harms storytelling in general.
In typical Internet behaviour, I tried to think of a rebuttal however immediately thought of what happened with Red Dwarf…
Black Adder had the right formula: different time periods in each series.
They’re better because they’re shorter, you daft cunt
Not just because they’re shorter.
The production schedule on scripted US shows is often absolutely insane. Ridiculously long hours, multiple episodes per week, sometimes even writing the scripts and plot as the show airs on network television, which is why you’ll have breaks or bottle episodes, to allow the writers to catch up.
From what I understand, a lot of the good UK tv shows, they have far more time to make it. Not the lower tier stuff (soaps, etc.) obviously, but that stuff doesn’t really get much of an audience outside of the UK.
Isn’t the real answer piracy?
Like… Did you learn nothing from the show?