Our Flag Means Death and 10 other great original shows Max has brutally canceled

Minx (Time of Death: December 2022 — Time of Rebirth: January 2023 — Time of Death again: January 2024)

Minx, a period comedy about a feminist who teams up with a low-rent publisher to put out the first erotic magazine for women, debuted in 2022 to positive reviews. Max renewed it for a second season, but then reversed course in December and canceled the show, before shooting on season 2 had finished.

The idea that Max would renew a show only to turn around and cancel it after cameras are already rolling on the next season must have creatives asking if WBD is a reliable business. Who wants to work with someone willing to throw that kind of wrench into the production process? As it happens, the cast and crew of Minx got to complete their work, since Starz picked up the second season. The new episodes aired in 2023...and then Starz canceled the show. It's been a topsy-turvy journey for this show.

But at this way, the two seasons of Minx that did get made available to watch on Starz platforms; had Starz not swooped in, they may have been removed from Max and cast out beyond the curtain of time and space, inaccessible to anyone.

Minx reminds me a bit of Julia: an incisive comedy that deals subtly with issues of gender, sexuality, and politics, all while making us laugh. None of that on Max, please.

Made for Love (Time of Death: June 2022)

Here's another original comedy about a trenchant issue that has a lot to say about a modern problem and says it in a funny way, so of course Max has to pitch it straight into the garbage.

Made for Love is about a woman named Hazel (Cristin Milioti) who escapes from the technological compound where she's lived for the past 10 years with her billionaire boyfriend (Billy Magnussen) only to find that he's installed tracking devices in her head that let him know not only where she is, but how she's feeling at all times, allowing him to continue to manipulate her long after she's decided to leave the relationship. Ray Romano plays her dad.

We're living in a time when technology is making huge strides forward faster than we can keep up, and where a tiny class of uber-wealthy moguls seem to control more and more of the economy. Is it a good thing that all this power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny, increasingly out-of-touch minority, or should we be scared? These are questions that Made for Love dives into, with humor helping the medicine go down.

So those are some of the great original scripted shows that Max has taken away from us. Now it's time to ask why they're doing this, and what it implies about the direction WBD is taking.