Steve Carell’s “Space Force” has been canceled after two seasons at Netflix.
The second season of the comedy, which re-teamed Carell and “The Office” creator Greg Daniels, debuted on Feb. 18. “Space Force” Season 2 picked up with General Mark Naird (Carell) and his underdog team having to prove their worth to a new administration while dealing with interpersonal challenges.
“Space Force” also starred series regulars John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Tawny Newsome, Diana Silvers, Jimmy O. Yang and Don Lake. Additionally, Lisa Kudrow played Naird’s wife, Maggie Naird, in the show’s first season, which also featured the late Fred Willard as his father.
Daniels and Norm Hiscock served as co-showrunners on “Space Force.” The show was executive produced by Daniels, Carell, Hiscock, Howard Klein, Brent Forrester and Ken Kwapis.
“Space Force” premiered its 10-episode first season in May 2020. It was cut down to seven episodes for Season 2.
The show received mix reviews, with Variety TV critic Caroline Framke writing of its second season, “In humbling the characters into bigger underdogs than they already were, ‘Space Force’ as a whole both loses its inherent tension and relaxes into itself as a lower-stakes workplace comedy. The result isn’t half as sleek or ambitious as the initial season, but the show at least seems much more comfortable in its own skin. In fact, it almost feels like an inverse of what Daniels and Michael Schur had to do with ‘Parks and Rec’ after its first bumpy season. Instead of smoothing out the kinks by making its bureaucrat protagonist more competent, ‘Space Force’ saps some of Naird’s power to bring him and his co-workers down to Earth.”
While “Space Force” has been scrapped by Netflix, the streaming service has other projects in the works from executive producer Daniels, including animated comedies “Bad Crimes” and “Exploding Kittens.”
Deadline first reported the new “Space Force” cancellation news.