Kindred not moving forward at FX 

It was recently announced that FX will be canceling the science fiction television series titled Kindred after just one season.

Kindred starred Mallori Johnson as Dana James, Micah Stock as Kevin Franklin, Ryan Kwanten as Thomas Weylin, Gayle Rankin as Margaret Weylin, David Alexander Kaplan as Rufus Weylin, Austin Smith as Luke, Sophia Brown as Sarah, Sheria Irving as Olivia and Eisa Davis as Denise.

Season 1 was recently released on FX on Hulu on December 13, 2022. The show consisted of eight episodes in total, with all episodes being released at once. There were themes of slavery, racism, inequality, and time travel in this science fiction series.

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Showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins expected Kindred to run for multiple seasons

Kindred was based on a novel of the same name written by Octavia E. Butler in 1979. It features an African-American woman who travels back in time, and witnesses the horrors of slavery and discovers dark secrets about her family. The Hollywood Reporter said that FX has decided to pull the plug on the show and not renew it for further seasons.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who served as its showrunner, expected the series to see many more seasons. Jenkins is perhaps best known for Watchmen.

In an interview with THR podcast TV’s Top 5, the showrunner opened up about how Octavia E. Butler's work served as a huge impact and influence on the black community. The show's development began as far back as 2010 and Obama's appointment as president even helped.

Also, the success of Get Out just proved beneficial to make genre fare for people of color. He even added that season 1 of Kindred was focused on just one-third of the novel and he was expecting three or four more seasons to cover the entire story.

Kindred currently has a 70 percent score among critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 51 percent rating among viewers. THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg said Kindred was,

“often effective, but key choices aren’t clicking.”

FX under CEO John Landgraf isn't known for axing shows this early as they prefer a slow and methodical approach to development. For the time being, reps for FX haven't commented on this cancelation.

It joins Terriers, Lights Out, Y: The Last Man, and The Bastard Executioner as shows that got canceled after one season.

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What is Kindred about?

The show follows Dana, a black woman who has just moved to Los Angeles with her partner Kevin Franklin. Her only remaining family member is Aunt Denise, and her goal is to establish a close relationship with her kin. But the horror unfolds when she is pulled back in time to the 19th century in the Antebellum South when and where slavery is still very much prevalent.

The show's synopsis, according to its trailer on YouTube reads,

"As Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer, begins to settle in her new home, she finds herself being pulled back and forth in time, emerging at a nineteenth-century plantation and confronting secrets she never knew ran through her blood."

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Courtney Lee-Mitchell, Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields, Ernestine Walker, and Merrilee Heifetz serve as the show's executive producers with music helmed by Twin Shadow.

Its distributed by Disney Platform Distribution.