Whenever many of us hear that one of our favorite shows has been cancelled, there's always the brief hope that another network will pick it up, but examples of that happening are pretty rare.
Sometimes it happens. When Fox canceled Brooklyn Nine-Nine in 2018, it found a new home the next day and three more seasons on NBC and Hulu (opens in a new tab), while Netflix stuck with Lucifer and Manifest after being dropped by their networks. originals. . These things are rare, but they do happen, usually on shows with small, passionate fan bases that don't attract enough viewers to satisfy advertisers. All this makes the case of American Rust even more strange.
Released in 2021, American Rust starred The Affair's Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney in an adaptation of Philipp Meyer's book of the same name. It was adapted for the small screen by Dan Futterman, writer of Foxcatcher and Capote, while David Alvarez, Bill Camp, Julia Mayorga and Rob Yang starred alongside Daniels and Tierney in these nine episodes.
The show saw Daniels play Del Harris, the police chief of an economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, who suddenly finds his professional ethics and limits challenged when the son of the woman he loves, Tierney's Grace, is arrested and charged. of murder.
Reviews for the show haven't been kind, with American Rust posting a low 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (Opens in a new tab), where many critics made an ugly comparison between it and the beloved Mare Of Easttown (Opens In a new tab). Showtime, the Paramount-owned network (opens in a new tab) where American Rust aired, dropped the show in January of this year after just one season, but it has now been brought back.
Registered? For whom?
Amazon. The tech giant debuted the show for its second season on Amazon FreeVee(opens in a new tab), its free, ad-supported platform formerly called IMDb TV.
Speaking about the surprise pickup, star Daniels said: "I'm grateful to Amazon Freevee for giving us the opportunity to make the second season of American Rust. Set in a struggling small-town American town, our authentic and realistic story is designed for broadcast. Movies aren't manufactured anymore they're mass produced in places like Amazon Freevee. That's where I want to be.
Lauren Anderson and Ryan Pirozzi, Amazon Freevee's Co-Heads of Content and Programming, added: "American Rust is exactly the kind of serious, engaging storytelling Amazon Freevee's audience loves, and we couldn't be more excited to bring back this prestigious series. to our customers, free of charge.
"We look forward to diving in with Boat Rocker and Dan Futterman to continue the story that intrigued audiences in season one, and to see the evolution of the characters played so ably by Jeff and Maura in this next chapter."
Analysis: Why does Amazon want this program?
Take a look at FreeVee's current listing and you'll see that American Rust is a pretty good fit in terms of theme with what the platform has to offer.
The revived platform's flagship show is Bosch: Legacy (opens in a new tab), another gritty crime drama, albeit with much better reviews. They also placed the critically successful Troppo, another dusty mystery (opens in a new tab) set in the Australian outback. You'll also find plenty of action dramas wrapped with procedural edges, shows like Burn Notice, and the new version of MacGyver.
Additionally, Prime Video offers subscribers shows like Reacher (opens in a new tab), which has two more seasons to go, and Chris Pratt's upcoming broadcast with The Terminal List. Both are exciting action dramas with real heroes and ultimate villains; a clear showcase of the kind of marketplace that Amazon loves. With a cast and creative team already established for American Rust, why spend a year developing your own if you don't have to?
Want to know more about the end of Jack Ryan and the planned spin-off of the franchise? Step this way (opens in a new tab).