Watch and Weep: 10 Most Disappointing Series Cancellations of 2023

Shows centering on women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color are often the first to get the axe—undermining streaming platforms’ supposed commitment to diversity.

The disappointments of past cancellations and the victory of the writers’ strike offer two sides of the same story—illustrating the foibles of a top-down approach to television production that emphasizes revenue over meaningful content. 

Here are our critic’s top picks for the most disappointing cancellations of 2023.

Gender, Corruption and Unbridled Power in Prime Series ‘The Power’: The Ms. Q&A With Naomi Alderman

Written by Naomi Alderman and adapted into a TV series for Prime Video, The Power asks a deceptively simple question: What would happen if, overnight, girls and some women worldwide gained the ability to administer electric shocks at will?

Ms. spoke with Naomi Alderman about her novel and how she sees its television adaptation resonating in the years since the book’s initial release.

‘The Owl House’ Versus ‘Harry Potter’: Magic School Shows, Queer Representation and Medical Autonomy

The series finale of The Owl House premiered last weekend on the Disney Channel—a story of a neurodivergent Latina girl named Luz Noceda, who stumbles into a realm inhabited by witches and demons.

Just this month, Warner Bros announced a new decade-long TV series adaptation of all seven Harry Potter books. But we don’t need another Harry Potter adaptation. We don’t need a rich, white, abled, cisgender, heterosexual woman with limited feminist views representing or speaking for us. What we need are new stories—better stories. Stories that better represent human diversity and actively seek to include as many different voices as possible. The Owl House was one of those stories, and while I’m heartbroken it ended sooner than it should have, I know there will be more.

It’s Not Just at the Oscars Where Women Filmmakers Are Left Out

This weekend’s Oscar awards have generated headlines about the lack of diversity among nominees—notably, this year, no women were nominated for Best Director. In fact, in the Academy’s 94-year history, it’s nominated just seven women in the category.

Whether the stories told are fiction or nonfiction, there continue to be considerable obstacles for women and nonbinary filmmakers when attempting to break the glass ceiling of storytelling on the big screen. This weekend’s awards ceremony only highlights how much further we still have to go.

How ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ Made Me a More Empathic Doctor

Watching the novel-turned-television show Fleishman Is in Trouble now, I am struck by how Rachel’s traumatic birth left the Fleishmans in trouble. Her birth story helped me realize how much my own traumatic birth transformed me as a doctor.

The show helps us feel the absurdity in insinuating that Rachel could have moved on from her delivery simply and gracefully, content to be alive and physically unscathed, perhaps attending therapy to help her cope. Taffy Brodesser-Akner shrewdly summed this all up when she wrote, Rachel “was what this doctor thought she was. She was nothing. She was just a woman.”

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: Black Women Win Big at the Emmys; U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Officially Scores Equal Pay

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week: U.S. women’s soccer team officially secures equal pay; Black women win big at the Emmys; how ranked-choice voting would help women candidates compete in New York City; and more.

Women Will Be Playing Hardball on TV This Season

“There’s no crying in baseball,” says Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own. But the film’s more subtle theme is that there are no lesbians in baseball. The 1992 film made no mention of the fact that many of the athletes in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) were gay.

But last Friday, Amazon Prime Video unveiled an eight-episode series, also called A League of Their Own, that includes openly lesbian AAGPBL players.