Fox Just Canceled a Major Show

While Fox has a few animated sitcoms that will seemingly never end, Duncanville is not one of them. Per a Deadline report published on Thursday, the network has canceled the show after three seasons. The show was reportedly drawing disappointing ratings, with an average of 641,000 viewers watching it on TV each week and 1.1 million total multi-platform viewers.

Season 3, which only featured ten episodes, wrapped up on Sunday, but the show wasn’t quite done airing episodes. Deadline reports that six more Duncanville episodes will air on Hulu, though it’s unclear if these installments are considered part of Season 3 or a whole new season. Hulu has not set premiere dates for those yet.

Duncanville is a typical family sitcom centered around an imaginative teenager Duncan (Amy Poehler). Poehler voices both the protagonist and his mom, Annie. The voice cast also includes Ty Burrell, Riki Lindhome, Rashida Jones, Wiz Khalifa, Kathy Najimy, Zach Cherry, Yassir Lester, Betsy Sodaro, Joy Osmanski and Natalie Palamides.

“So Mike Scully and I had worked together on Parks & Rec. He was a writer, and, of course, he’s a genius who was behind so many great moments on The Simpsons,” she said. “We had been talking about working together in different ways, and about doing an animated show.

Poehler co-created the series alongside Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully. In a 2020 Digital Spy interview, the Parks and Recreation alum revealed the show started out of her desire to collaborate and voice the role of a teenage boy, an unexpected role that many great talents have flexed to pull off in the past.

“So Mike Scully and I had worked together on Parks & Rec. He was a writer, and, of course, he’s a genius who was behind so many great moments on The Simpsons,” Poehler said. “We had been talking about working together in different ways, and about doing an animated show. I think… if I remember correctly, I think I said something like, ‘I would love to do the voice of a teenage boy’. I think about all the great female performers like Nancy Cartwright and Pamela Adlon and others who have done these great characters, and I thought, ‘I think I can do that well.’

“So I think it started from there. What could be this kid? What could it be about? Mike and Julie hilariously started to shape Duncan as this very average kid, and it was really important for us to make sure that Duncan wasn’t special in any real way [laughs].”