After “The Resident” or “NCIS Los Angeles”, it’s the turn of another very popular American series in the world to stop. The CBS channel has announced the cancellation of “SWAT”, carried by Shemar Moore, at the end of its season 6.
After The Resident, which was recently canceled at the end of its season 6, another American series broadcast in France on TF1 will unfortunately end.
The CBS channel has just announced that SWAT, led by Shemar Moore in the role of Sergeant Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson, will not return at the start of the school year for a seventh season.
The detective series, which also has Jay Harrington, Alex Russell and David Lim in its cast, will end across the Atlantic on May 19, after six seasons and no less than 128 episodes.
The cancellation of SWAT may seem surprising since, with an average of 6.8 million viewers watching each episode, for a rate of 0.7 on the preferred target of 18-49 year olds, the series created by Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) was managed to increase its ratings this year – which is quite rare after so many seasons.
Allowing the passage to revitalize the schedule of Friday nights of CBS, where she joined Blue Bloods and helped launch the new Fire Country, with Max Thieriot (Bates Motel), which quickly established itself as a big success and is already sure to come back for a season 2.
Despite this, SWAT is far from being the channel’s most-watched program. And its cancellation is also a financial decision because the series worn by Shemar Moore does not completely belong to CBS (it is co-produced by Sony Pictures TV and CBS Studios) and therefore proves to be more and more expensive for the channel.
Deadline reports that, in a move of budgetary restrictions in view of a possible season 7, Sony (which is the majority studio in the production shares of the series) and CBS tried until the last moment to find an agreement. In vain. Which therefore led to the surprise cancellation of the series this Friday, May 5.
SWAT thus joins NCIS: Los Angeles among the CBS series that will end in May. Although the case of the NCIS spin-off led by LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell is somewhat different since the decision to make season 14 the last was made several months ago. Allowing the authors to imagine a true ending. Which will not be the case for SWAT (unless the season 6 finale was thought of as both a final season and one final series potential).
In France, the broadcast of season 5 ended last February with an episode which marked the farewell of Lina Esco, the interpreter of Christina Alonso, present in the credits since the launch of the series in 2017. The sixth and last season, which opens with two episodes taking place in Thailand, should arrive in the coming months on TF1, without further details.