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Seven not renewing Wild Boys

Seven's ambitious colonial drama has been shot at just 13 episodes, following disappointing ratings.

The Seven Network is not renewing its latest drama Wild Boys for 2012.

The ambitious colonial drama starring Daniel MacPherson, Zoe Ventoura, Michael Dorman, David Field, Nathaniel Dean and Jeremy Sims will end with 13 episodes.

The decision not to pursue a second season comes as ratings for the show hover around 900,000 despite a successful launch of 1.67m viewers.

A Seven spokesman said: “We are very proud to have been able to bring Wild Boys to the screen. The show premiered to strong audience figures, which stayed with the show for a number of weeks. However, those numbers didn’t hold with the show and regrettably have made the decision not to commission series 2.”

The period drama was full of promise with handsome production values, but reviews for the show were tepid.

The turnaround comes despite Seven promising the show would be part of its 2012 programming at its launch in September.

Julie McGauran,who produced the series with Sarah Smith, was recently announced as joining Seven’s drama department with John Holmes and Bevan Lee.

Seven’s drama slate for 2012 now includes Packed to the Rafters, Winners and Losers, Home and Away and a new series, A Place to Call Home.

Amended.

68 Responses

  1. They really should’ve made more seasons of Wild Boys, I was watching it every week, with my family. It was dramatic, action packed, with good actors and I enjoyed the little bits of comedy throughout. If they were to ever have another go at this show, I’d be thrilled. Enjoying to watch the reruns of it in a Sunday arvo

  2. No Way!!! I just googled to find out when it was on next because I’ve been hanging out for the return grrrrrrrrrrrr. It was such a great show. It was the only program I watched because everything else is full of reality crap and judging! This was something totally different and exciting, great acting, funny and beautiful scenes, what a shame 🙁

  3. typical Chanel 7, probably will replace it with more American crap, what channel 7 helps the demise of Australian made , im getting payed tv, im sick of this

  4. Wild boys would have had a lot more than 900k people watching. We haven’t been involved in ratings in my house since about 1985, that’s a long time. A lot of people I know have never particpated in ratings, so who heck do them these days! Ratings are a lot of crap. Not true numbers of who is watching the show. Many shows over the years have been taken away because of so called low rating figures. How can we have our say????
    Sure Wild boys had holes in it, like how many times did they escape death!! Why didn’t Jack kill the bad gang leader when he had the chance? But some of the story lines were good, the horses were beautiful, the scenery was lovely. Our Aussie were actors were pretty good, a change from all the US shows. We needmore Aussie shows for our actors. 7 give WB another go down the track. It’s good for our kids to see what the living conditions in Australia were like in the 1860’s. I enjoyed it.

  5. Wild Boys was definitely a promising series with lots of fantastic Australian talent. We watched the entire series and were hoping for more, however the one factor that may have turned people off perhaps (and that we had to overlook) was the ‘cheese factor’. There were some corny one-liners in there. If it had been a more ‘serious’ drama aimed at the 8.30pm timeslot it could have been so much better.

    We used to watch Packed to the Rafters but stopped a series ago as it go so tedious and cheesy (there are intelligent viewers out there you know). As for Winners and Losers it is unwatchable and a total disgrace that it is being kept when shows like Wildboys and City Homicide have been axed. The network reaction reeks a little of politicians and their polls. Will the ‘real’ Seven please stand up with some quality serious Australian drama that is well-written, produced and acted?!!! And please, hold the cheese!!

  6. i was totally devastated and shocked to here such a great show had been axed. It’s like the 900,000 viewers don’t count! Packed to the rafters is now boring, home and away is only interesting when the river boys have a story line, winners and losers well i havent watched it for a whole season….But Wild Boys… I never missed an episode. My whole family would watch it with me. I say Bring it back!!!!!

  7. My daughter came over every sunday to watch this show with me, we loved it ! Please bring it back, it is the first show we have looked foward to in a long time, now thay have taken it from us! Please re-instate it next year and the year after and on!

  8. So sick of the networks “giving up” on good shows – and/or moving them quietly to another channel without letting their fans know. Wild Boys was good fun and something different from the usual serving of “killing” (cop) shows – that are all becoming a bit beige and too similar to each other. 900k viewers should be considered pretty good going when you consider that the total share is now so diluted with all the new channels that seem to get added every 5 minutes.

  9. i miss wild boys!!! it is the best show ever!!! i cant wait until it comes on d.v, i will watch it over and over!! that is how much i love it. i am sad that they will stop filming and there wont be anymore episodes.my favourtie people is marry dan jack conrad and fedrick!! but my most favourite is dan and jack!!! 😀

  10. Bring back wild boys. It is great aussie show. Watch it every Sunday Night. All the family like it. Much better than the usual American cop shows that we get all the time.

  11. bring it back next year, it was one of the only programmes we watched every week, it was good family fun, don’t replace it with cheap rubbish or repeats. Australian actors should be given these opportunities not give us more reality programmes or american programmes. come on 7 change your mind.

  12. I cant believe that a show with 900,000 viewers is to b axed… This is the best aussie show ever….maybe b4 they axed ot tjey shuld hav gotten the viewers responses…

  13. I Hate it when Aussies mindlessly bag Aussie productions just because they’re Australian. They’re probably the same m,ob who bag our national sports teams the minute they lose a match. Having got That off my chest, I am a huge fan of Aussie productions – SBS and ABC having some of the best of them – but to my own one-eyed surprise somehow Wildboys just didn’t cut it for me. I think I agree with those saying it needed more grit – it has been a bit cheesy and I only bothered with 3 episodes before giving it the flick. A hint for Channel 7 – a 4-6 ep mini-series with more depth would have been a much better bet.

  14. I missed this post…
    I am not surprised … the first couple of eps were great but then they lost my attention … the “drama” was not convincing enough and it ended up too much like a slapstick comedy … a real pitty as it had tremendous potential. It was just too flippant.

  15. Best show on tv at the moment…i know of so many people that watch it religiously like myself…seeing that is quite hard to find a decent Aussie show!!! really gonna miss it
    @OzJ…what do you know of Australian History if your saying this show is more American than Australian?

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