Alas, not everything from the ’80s is making a comeback, as Apple’s Time Bandits series has been canceled.
Time Thieves Season 1 started streaming on Apple TV+ a few months ago, but I guess most of you didn’t know that because apparently it didn’t do well enough to be renewed for a second season. According to Deadline, the iPhone maker’s streaming service decided not to pick up a second season about a month after the last episode was released. If this is surprising to you, I’m not quite sure why, because on Metacritic, the show has a critics rating of 66/100 and a user rating of just 4.6/10. This is not a great start for the first season of a TV series, especially in an age where shows need to be wildly successful to have a chance of being renewed.
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Additionally, Deadline notes that the show’s failure to crack the top 10 on the Nielsen streaming charts suggests modern audiences really aren’t that interested in it — though Deadline has heard that the show is doing well in the U.K., home of the original 1981 Terry Gilliam film and part of the setting for the new version. But apparently, British nostalgia isn’t enough to keep it around.
It’s worth noting that the show did draw criticism for actors with dwarfism, as the original film cast mostly had actors with dwarfism, such as R2-D2 himself, Kenny Baker, and the show completely avoided that in terms of casting. In addition to this issue, one of the show’s actors, Charlyne Yi, claimed that they were attacked on the set.
