The Brink has been Canceled

Sorry Jack Black and Tim Robbins. HBO is canceling The Brink just after one season. It’s rare for HBO to not give even a struggling show a second season to work out the kinks, but The Brink just wasn’t cutting it, apparently.

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that HBO brass made the announcement this morning. Here’s the quote from HBO given to EW:

“After evaluating our schedule and our programming needs, we unfortunately decided we cannot give The Brink the attention it deserves for a second season. We are proud of the first season and wish everyone involved in this show the very best.”

Making the whole situation pretty confusing, The political comedy was actually renewed for a second season back in July. I guess that’s what HBO meant when they said they “evaluated our schedule and our programming needs.” The Brink did well by the numbers, but didn’t come close achieving the runaway success of the Dwayne Johnson-led Ballers. The Brink had the benefit of having Ballers as its run in, as it aired before it.

Poor reviews and word of mouth couldn’t have helped it either. The Brink has a meteoritic score of just 52, which is low compared to the rest of HBO’s current lineup. Ballers comes in with a score of 65, The Leftovers soars at 80 and fellow comedies Silicon Valley and Veep wow critics with respective scores of 86 and 90.

It’s too bad that the material wasn’t up to snuff for the talent that was involved in this show. Jack Black is usually a sure thing when it comes to comedy, and Tim Robbins isn’t in the business of being a part of subpar projects. Maybe HBO can find a better use for one of the two actors similarly to how Ted Danson worked on both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bored to Death.