Posted in: HBO, Preview, TV | Tagged: Armando Iannanucci, Avenue 5, dark comedy, HBO, hugh laurie, josh gad, satire

Avenue 5 Season 2 HBO Series' Last? Cast Released From Contracts

Published Sat, 28 May 2022 08:27:12 -0500

It appears Armando Iannucci's darkly satirical HBO space comedy Avenue 5 has been canceled. Deadline Hollywood reported that it has not been renewed, the completed Season 2 has not yet been scheduled, and the cast has been released from their contracts. The cable series is set forty years in the future when traveling the solar system has become a commercial venture and follows a luxury cruise ship full of awful rich people who get marooned in space after the chief engineer gets killed in an accident. The captain, played by Hugh Laurie, turns out to be an actor trying to hold everything and everyone together while increasingly inept rescue efforts from Earth keep failing. Josh Gad plays the childish and narcissistic tech billionaire who owns the ship and is trapped along with everyone else.

Avenue 5 Not Renewed for Season 3, Probably Cancelled — "Avenue 5" image: HBO

The series was an allegory for the times, the Avenue 5 spaceship was a microcosm for both America and the UK in the Trump and Brexit era where everyone was divided, fighting, and believed everything was fake news. This is the kind of merciless dark satirical comedy that the British like to do more than Americans. If you think it's funny to watch stupid, arrogant people throw themselves out of an airlock because they thought they were smarter than the facts, then this is the show for you. If you hate that – and many of you hated the show – then you may have contributed to its cancellation.

Season 1 of Avenue 5 premiered in January 2020 and was renewed for a second season in February of that year, just a few weeks before the start of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown occurred. Filming on the 2nd season, delayed by COVID, finally got underway in August 2021 and wrapped in November.

Given the time that has passed, the options on the cast, led by Hugh Laurie, came up, and the actors were released, sources tell Deadline. Several of them have moved on, signing as series regulars on new shows. Aside from Hugh Laurie and Josh Gad, the show also starred Zach Woods, Rebecca Front, Suzy Nakamura, Lenora Crichlow, Nikki Amuika-Bird, and Ethan Phillips all playing varying degrees of awful people.

You can still watch season one of Avenue 5 on HBO to experience all the gleeful, bloody nastiness.

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