Status: Cancelled
Aired: 2013-14 (1 Season Totaling 13 Episodes)
Network: FOX
Starring: Karl Urban, Michael Ealy, Minka Kelly, Mackenzie Crook, Michael Irby, Lili Taylor
Series Website: www.fox.com/almost-human
Description: The year is 2048. Meet Detective JOHN KENNEX (Urban), a cop who survived one of the most catastrophic attacks ever made against the police department. After waking up from a 17-month coma, he can’t remember much – except that his partner was killed, he lost one of his legs and he is now outfitted with a highly sophisticated synthetic appendage. Suffering from depression, mental atrophy, trauma-onset OCD, PTSD and the “psychological rejection of his synthetic body part,” John returns to work at the behest of longtime ally Captain SANDRA MALDONADO (Emmy Award nominee Lili Taylor, “Six Feet Under,” “Ransom”). By mandate, every cop must partner with a robot. And despite his passionate aversion to androids, John is paired up with a battle-ready MX-43. But he abruptly terminates his partnership after the robot discovers incriminating information about him. So technician RUDY LOM (Mackenzie Crook, “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise) introduces John to DORIAN (Ealy), a discontinued android with unexpected emotional responses. Although such responses were deemed flaws, it is in these “flaws” that John relates to Dorian most. After all, John is part-machine now, and Dorian is part-human. John and Dorian’s understanding of each other not only complements them, it connects them. FOX.com
Why Was It Cancelled? This show gives the classic example of network bungling and poor decision-making. It was hampered by poor scheduling (a late Fall debut, frequent preemptions, episodes aired out of order), yet it still did relatively well despite the hurdles and showed signs of growing its audience in early 2014 before the preemptions killed its momentum. And its average rating based on the overnights in the 18-49 demo were not that bad when compared to the rest of FOX’s shows for the season. But still FOX cancelled it in a move that made it appear they wanted the show to fail from the start (maybe they had a fall out with the producers or studio?). There were rumors of the show being shopped around and fans attempted a campaign to save the show, but the momentum appears to have fizzled out.
This is truly a shame, this was by far the best new fall 2013 show. Two lead characters who were fenomal, which a great supporting cast, although I wasn’t fond of the captain. Still don’t understand that nobody seemed to be watching, it was Karl Urban in the lead!!!???