Series swap: Showtime saves ‘Unpaired’ and Netflix stays with ‘Ripley’

A few years ago, Netflix was famous for saving series that had been canceled by others. But her reputation shot 180% and now she’s the one who has a reputation for canceling multiple shows without giving them time to grow and find their audience (not to mention what’s happening with shared accounts, clear) . One of the most recent cancellations was “Mismatched,” a romantic comedy from “Sex and the City” and “Emily in Paris” creator Darren Star starring Neil Patrick Harris, and which received the ax blow after just one season last January.

Following the cancellation, Star and co-creator Jeffrey Richman began a search to find a new home for her and it paid off. ‘Unpaired’ is officially canceled thanks to Showtime, who stuck with the project to give it a second season and possibly continue beyond, as exclusively revealed by Deadline. It should be noted that despite premiering on Netflix, ‘Desparejado’ is a production of MTV Entertainment Studios, a subsidiary of Paramount Global, which in turn owns Showtime, so the move makes a lot of sense.

At the moment, Paramount is in the midst of an internal restructuring process, similar to what Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO Max are going through, in which he seems determined to focus on his most popular franchises, such as “Dexter” or “Billions”. Soon Showtime (HBO’s main competitor in the television market) will merge with Paramount+ in North America and the streaming service will be rebranded as Paramount+ with Showtime. This resulted in the cancellation of several series, such as ‘American Gigolo’ or ‘Let the Right One In’, and the disappearance of a handful of titles from its catalog, already completed or canceled, such as ‘Become God in Florida’ or ‘Take around’. For now there is no news about the arrival of the second season of ‘Desparejado’ in Spainbut it could end up on SkyShowtime, a new streaming service that will bring together content from Universal and Paramount and which is initially scheduled for this month.

Tom Ripley continues to travel

In this dance of series, cancellations and bailouts, Showtime has decided to do without one more project, in this case before its premiere. We are talking about ‘Ripley’, the new serial adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novels centered on the character of Tom Ripley, played on this occasion by Andrew Scott (‘Fleabag’). According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series is led by Steven Zaillian and stars Dakota Fanning makes the leap from Showtime to (mind you) Netflix, which retains the rights to release it. At the moment the details of the agreement are being outlined and it is not yet known when the series, which has been in development since 2019, will arrive on the platform.