Netflix is known for being a brutal mistress in the world of entertainment, guided by vague currents they call “the algorithm,” and advertising shows for months only to drop them without any fanfare, leaving fans to scramble and guess and have to work their way through the trending releases to see if something new appeared. When these shows, such as 1899, from the people behind Dark, don’t garner an immediate Stranger Things-sized audience, they go bye-bye.
Deadline confirmed1899 is just the latest in Netflix’s growing pile of shows cut off before they could even hope to find an audience, like the recently axed Blockbuster sitcom (based on the last surviving retail outlet of the chain Netflix cancelled in real life). 1899 featured a cast of eclectic strangers all heading across the Atlantic in the year of the title, 1899, aboard the steamship Kerberos (as in Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the underworld in Greek mythology). The route the passengers are following saw the disappearance of the ship Prometheus four months earlier. Now the passengers and crew of the Kerberos have suffered the same fate at the hands of Netflix.
Taking to Instagram, the series creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese confirmed that fans wouldn’t be following the adventures of the intrepid passengers of the most ill-fated sea voyage since Gilligan’s Island or Titanic. “With a heavy heart we have to tell you that 1899 will not be renewed. We would have loved to finish this incredible journey with a 2nd and 3rd season as viewers did with Dark. But sometimes things don’t turn out the way you planned.” Or sometimes creators face something even darker and more mysterious than the menace plaguing their characters: they face the algorithm.
1899 is the latest casualty in a long list of series that Netflix got rid of prematurely as the streamer continues its monolithic quest to fill its gullet with “content” no matter the cost to creatives involved. The Getdown, Girlboss, Everything Sucks!, and Blockbuster are just a few of the high-profile shows that don’t see a tomorrow after one season, unlike Stranger Things or The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The characters of 1899 won’t see the end of their journey (or get an answer to the season-ender that explodes everything viewers thought they knew), but maybe for 1899, it was about the journey and not the destination.
1899 is still on Netflix.
MORE: Most Overlooked TV Shows of 2022
Source: Deadline
