History cancels Knightfall and Project Blue Book

And then there was one. The Hollywood Reporter has it that History is cancelling two of the three scripted series it currently has running, both of which have been going for two seasons.

First, there’s Knightfall, a historical fiction show about the success, fall, persecution, and suppression of the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order active during the Crusades. Splashy and action-packed, the show was an okay time, but didn’t exactly get fantastic ratings, averaging around 650,000 during its run.

It did star Mark Hamill as a grizzled Templar veteran, though.

Then there’s Project Blue Book. about Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer, astrophysicist and professor who joins Project Blue Book, a real-life series of studies conducted by the United States Air Force back in the 1950s into unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Hynek goes in to this work a sceptic, but sees some things that make him reevaluate his position.

Project Blue Book starred Game of Thrones veteran Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) in the lead role, and got better ratings than Knightfall: about 1.3 same-day viewers on average for its second season. That wasn’t enough to save it from the chopping block, though.

This leaves History with only one scripted show left: Vikings, and that’s right in the middle of its final season. It ends this year. There is a sequel series coming, but oddly enough, it’ll be on Netflix.

That said, it’s not like History will have no scripted content when Vikings ends for good. There are several miniseries about American presidents on the way, including Grant, Lincoln and Theodore, although those probably aren’t multi-season affairs. Maybe History just can’t afford to have an expensive historical fiction show if it’s not a big hit like Vikings was.

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