EXCLUSIVE: John Oliver will not be happy about this — Ryan Murphy’s Doctor Odyssey will not be coming back for a second season on ABC — at least not anytime soon. It’s a default cancellation as the cast’s options are expiring on Monday and are not being picked up, sources said, releasing the actors to do other projects. The crew also has moved on, largely staying employed as crew members are known for floating from one Ryan Murphy show to another.
Sources stress that the glossy cruise ship medical drama starring Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson has not been formally canceled, and Murphy is weighing creative options as to where he may want to take it next. If the show ultimately comes back — on ABC or Hulu where it has done well — new deals with the cast will have to be made.
For the time being, Murphy’s volume at ABC won’t change — he has new spinoff 9-1-1: Nashville replacing Doctor Odyssey in the Thursday 9 PM slot behind returning mothership 9-1-1.
“Doctor Odyssey isn’t currently on our schedule,” Craig Erwich, President, Disney Television Group, told Deadline last month. “Ryan’s really busy. He’s doing a lot with us. 9-1-1, 9-1-1 Nashville, All’s Fair [for Hulu]. So we’re just continuing that creative conversation with him.”
Also starring Phillipa Soo and Sean Teale, Doctor Odyssey generated a lot of interest and got off to a hot start last fall. Its trailer set a record for a new broadcast series with 77.8M views in the first 48 hours, and the series amassed 13.6M cross-platform viewers for the premiere in its first week.
But the Love Boat homage was not able to sustain the momentum throughout its freshman run and, besides a couple of ratings upticks, including for the 9-1-1 crossover and the finale, it didn’t follow the growth trajectory of fellow freshman light procedural drama High Potential, with its season average ratings — especially on linear — among the lowest on ABC despite its big 9-1-1 lead-in. Meanwhile, with its slick production values and big stars, Doctor Odyssey is expensive to produce. (The series also is the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by three former crew members.)
Still, with its escapist feel and campy vibe, Doctor Odyssey quickly developed a cult following, and it got traction on streaming and social media. The ultimate decision on its future was left to Murphy, with the door open for him to revisit the series in the future if he has an idea. It has been done — HBO’s cult comedy The Comeback just set a return for a third season 20 years after Season 1 and 10.5 years after Season 2.
According to sources, Ryan is still considering a possible continuation, with the process likely to take awhile given the size of his current slate. So, for the time being, the drama anthology — whose season ended with a satisfying finale that didn’t leave unanswered questions — is done, and some of its elaborate sets have been struck. It is the only new or returning 2024-25 ABC series not to be back for 2025-26.
Eric Schrier, President of Disney TV Studios whose division 20th Television produces Doctor Odyssey, spoke to Deadline in May about the call to put the show’s fate in Murphy’s hands, adding, “I really love Doctor Odyssey, I think it’s a wildly inventive show, and we’re doing everything we can to support it.”
One other person who loves Doctor Odyssey is Last Week Tonight host Oliver who last month called ABC “a disgrace” over the fact that they hadn’t renewed the show.
“What the f— are you doing ABC? It’s sexy ER on a boat. It’s The Pitt with sharks. It’s got — and I’m not even gonna try and beat their tagline on this — ‘big deck energy,’ Oliver said on Last Week Tonight. “How is ABC renewing shows called The Rookie and Will Trent, whose premise is apparently just ‘despite being dyslexic, he’s become a special agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’? What? But they haven’t renewed the only show brave enough to answer the question: ‘What if sick but boat?’”
Doctor Odyssey was executive produced by Murphy, Jackson, Johnson, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. Paris Barclay was director and executive producer. Eric Paquette, Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson and Nissa Diederich also executive produced.
