At Apple TV they seem to have changed their mentality regarding their cancellation and renewal policy. If a new series doesn’t work, there is no brand image that justifies continuing with production as if they were a money incinerator. The last to go through the guillotine of the technology company? Sleepless Nights, the series that tried to provide a fresh look at the romantic comedy.
The protagonists were Craig Roberts, who had directed Red Oaks, and Antonia Thomas, known for her work in Lovesick and The Good Doctor, and they did not have an obvious love affair on their hands. Sleepless Nights, in fact, began as a story of friendship: the one established between two strangers who, due to their drowsiness, spent hours and hours each night sharing concerns, obsessions and idle moments.
It cannot be said that the cancellation can be taken as a surprise: the creation of Steve Burge and Natalie Walker was broadcast between September and October 2023 and, after the end of its broadcasts, it had remained in a bubble. While it is true that Apple TV is slow to announce renewals, even when they have already started the production of new episodes, in this case the lack of media impact of the proposal forced us to be cautious with its future prospects.
With the cancellation of Sleepless Nights there are now two cancellations announced this May. And Constellation, the science fiction series with Noomi Rapace that started the action on the International Space Station, was already abruptly ended after only two months in the Apple TV catalog.
The platform has less patience after the difficulties in finding a verifiable audience phenomenon after the end of Ted Lasso, which ended in the spring of 2023 and proved to be the most watched original series of the year in the United States, despite Apple’s low penetration in the market compared to streaming services such as Netflix or Prime Video and the low consumption data that the rest of their titles generally garner.