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Axed?: Hunted ….but wait, says HBO.

Update: Melissa George's spy thriller is shot down in the UK but US co-producers are planning a second season.

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BBC1 has confirmed that Kudos Film and Television’s drama Hunted will not return for a second series.

UK spy thriller, Hunted, starring Melissa George, has been axed by the BBC ahead of its final episode.

The broadcaster has axed the series because it didn’t “find the mainstream audience” the BBC had hoped.

Hunted, which premieres in Australia on SBS ONE next week, began its UK run in October as a potential successor to Spooks with an overnight audience of 3.36m but has since dropped to 2.58m.

The bad news follows terrible headlines for actress Melissa George in Australia, following remarks that she hated coming home and having her Home and Away years constantly referenced in interviews.

”I don’t need credibility from my country any more, I just need them all to be quiet. If they have nothing intelligent to say, please don’t speak to me any more. I’d rather be having a croissant and a little espresso in Paris or walking my French bulldog in New York City,” she said.

Kudos Films exec producer Stephen Garrett is currently in Australia as a guest of SPAA 2012.

UPDATE: HBO, parent company of co-partner Cinemax, is making plans for a second season after all.

“We are making plans with creator and executive producer Frank Spotnitz and star Melissa George to present a new chapter in the Sam Hunter mythology,” said HBO’s Kary Antholis, in a statement issued to Fairfax overnight.

“We are very pleased with what Hunted has done for Cinemax’s brand and are very excited about what lies ahead,” Antholis said.

Source: BroadcastNow

27 Responses

  1. This could be good news,all the personal vitriol aside this very well could have been a better outcome in the first place if it had of been American from the start.
    George is a good actress and her American accent is so much better and less pretentious(you know the Pommie accent cats bum mouth thing she does).
    Now just find her some better places to hide and better level of believability and voila we have a good show.

  2. @markathome The thing that has got most people riled up is that in the sentence of croissants, espresso and walking her French bulldog, she made it sound like she was referring to Australia as a cultural backwater she was no longer interested in. If it had just been said that Melissa was tired of talking about Home And Away without that particular sentence coming in to play, the general populous likely would not have batted an eyelid.

    @Adam Good call on that Cinemax would probably continue with the show as it was having reasonable success with it.

  3. Australians are unbelievable. A country full of jealous self loathers that delude themselves into thinking others are bragging or being snobs when they talk about their achievements or current situation.

    Australia is, just on a much larger scale, a small town with small town syndrome. Anyone who dares leave and find success in their career overseas (and don’t delude yourselves again, Ms. George has had success in her professional acting career) but then dares to come back here and “gloat” is seen as an ungrateful snob for not accepting what “we” gave them. I’m sorry, what did “we” give them? She was born here, worked as a child here, and you now somehow want personal credit for it?

    As St.Michael said over at ‘The Punch’ (Quoting for accuracy and credit)
    ” Ms.George told the truth and stuck the whole pretence of the publicity circus up its collective arse.

    I thought in Australia we respected people who were “true blue”, as in honest; who didn’t put on artifice; who weren’t overly irreverent to “the system”. And here you are: congratulating people like Nicole Kidman or Kylie Minogue—who, given their actions and not their words, prefer to be anywhere else but Australia—for coming back here and smiling while they lie to you in American or weird put-on British accents that they still love Australia and get back here when they can.

    Kidman’s last Australian production was (Christ) Australia in 2008. Before that she hadn’t spent a US dime or played an Australian part here since 1989. She has dual citizenship: US and Australian, a foot in both camps as it were. And yet we still gave her membership in the Order of Australia. Kylie Minogue stays out of Australia for tax reasons, i.e. she rips us off from her income and yet still gets all her cancer treatment here in Australia. At least Ms George has actually participated in an Australian show in the past five years or so.

    Stop thinking that expats like Kidman or Minogue give a shit about Australia beyond its markets. Neither of them are heavily invested here or give much back here. It’s often people’s flaws, not their strengths, that make them interesting or human. Sometimes it’s the rude or “ingracious” types who tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to. Good on Ms George for telling the bloody truth for once.”

  7. triangle is fine for a 1 off viewing..i just don’t get why you people are dumping on her….she just said a few words on what she thinks of some of the media in this country…just like you people do..everyday of the year on this site….

  10. I was going to make a comment on how she now has more free time to walk her french bulldog around New York City and sip lattes in Paris, but it looks like someone beat me to it!

    Anyway, I watched the first thirty minutes of Hunted’s premiere and it looked like a low-budget version of 24 meets Alias. Didn’t grab me so didn’t bother watching the rest

  12. I like her, and what work I have seen of hers (not home and away) she’s been great, she really is a revelation in the series “In Treatment”. She never had a meltdown, it’s all you people having the meltdown, oh and hunt out her movie “Triangle” it’s a fantastic “genre” piece……

  13. Totally over-rated as an actress and wow, talk about ungrateful to the country that gave her a start. Just go away and walk your dog in Paris or wherever, Australia is not interested in you.

  15. There’s still hope for the series as Cinemax is having reasonable success. Hope people judge the show on its quality and not how Melissa George supposedly had a “meltdown”.

  17. Elsewhere I’ve seen this show being reported as not being “recommissioned for a second series” rather than axed.
    TV shows in the UK usually only run for 6 or 8 episodes (Hunted will be finishing its run of 8 this weekend), so this is not too unusual for a British production.
    I would assume that the BBC were hoping for some more longevity out of this show though.

  19. Even after googling her I’m still not exactly sure who she is, but it looks like she’s gonna have plenty of time for croissants, espresso and walkies from today.
    So win-win really.

  23. A successor to Spooks this was never going to be. It was sheer garbage, compared to Spooks which ran to 10 seasons over 10 years and was riveting stuff. Don’t know if they had the same writers/producers as Spooks.
    As for trashing her roots – isn’t that called, um, burning one’s bridges?

  25. No surprises here with the numbers it was always going to be hard justifying a second season,as I eluded to in a previous post she would of course been aware of this and would have added to her demeanor while here.
    Could have been a really good show shame attention was not given to details and huge credibility holes.
    Hiding precariously around a corner in full view like a scene out of “Days of our Lives” and the house of a major crime lord not having any security of its own were all just a little hard to swallow.

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