The superhuman power of the Alphas couldn’t save the show. After two seasons, SyFy cancels Alphas.
The news, according to Todd VanDerWerff at avclub.com, was first reported by the stars of the show, Azita Ghanizada, Ryan Cartwright, and Warren Christie, posting tweets informing their fans of the show’s demise. SyFy’s website later confirmed the end of Alphas.
At the beginning of the first season, Alphas garnered 1.845 million viewers, but it wrapped the second season on Syfy in October with only 1.304 million viewers on average, a drop of nearly 30%.
Alphas is a blend of superhero plus procedural genres. The Alpha team are the “good” superhumans while the emerging superhumans and those who want to control them get investigated by the Alpha team, loosely associated with the FBI (and in a constant battle with them for control of their investigations.)
The series should have been more successful, with an excellent cast including David Strathairn as Dr. Lee Rosen, a neurologist and psychiatrist who helped form the group of highly evolved humans, and Ryan Cartwright as Gary Bell, a “transducer” (a human antennae) whom you might recognize from the TV show Bones.
"We’ve been proud to present this entertaining, high-quality series for two seasons and to work with an incredible ensemble of talented actors, producers and creatives as well as our partners at BermanBraun Television," Syfy said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "We’d like to thank the show’s dedicated regular viewers for their tremendous support."
Alphas created by Zak Penn (co-writer of X-Men: The Last Stand) and Michael Karnow (of Time Squad), but now, SyFy is banking on names like M. Night Shyamalan, Ronald D. Moore executive producer of Battlestar Galactica and Caprica), and Bryan Fuller (writer for Hannibal TV series and Heroes and works like Being Human, Continuum, Lost Girl, and Defiance which rolls out in April. Apparently, the pairing of Warehouse 13 with Alphas wasn't enough to save it.
While I wasn't a big fan of Alphas, it beat the reality show fare that is so inexpensive to make and therefore much more popular with TV companies lately. Getting real drama on TV and getting real drama in the science fiction genre is getting almost impossible. However, SyFy fans are looking forward to Defiance in April, though wincing at the cost of the show which might precipitate it’s doom. Fans are hoping it's not a lot of hype over a lot of nothing.
Alphas isn’t alone on the chopping block. Around the TV nation other popular shows are getting the axe:
- The Office (look for a potential spinoff),
- 30 Rock (after seven seasons, 13 more epis to go),
- Fringe (one would have thought it should be on SyFy and will be missed greatly), ,
- Gossip Girl (10 epis remain),
- Jersey Shore (MTV’s most-watched series of all time)
- Weeds (one of the longest running comedies in cable history)
- Spartacus (a history genre buff’s delight)
- The Big C (fourth season will have four hour-long epis)
- Private Practice (13 epi-ending season)
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