Entertainment

Bad News For These Two HBO Shows

by Alanna Bennett

Stephen Merchant and Chris O'Dowd are two very funny humans who came to fame through their work on memorable British sitcoms. When those sitcoms ended, they wandered over to HBO to form new, American TV shows. Those shows in question — Hello Ladies and Family Tree — have now been cancelled, in a depressing display of America's inability to handle British Isles awesomeness.

O'Dowd — who starred in Britain's The IT Crowd but came to larger American audiences mainly through his role in 2011's Bridesmaids — led Family Tree, which was created by Christopher Guest and Jim Piddock and followed a man investigating his familial lineage and the strange stories and characters that come out of it after losing his job and his girlfriend.

Merchant's Hello Ladies, starred an awkward Englishman (often fruitlessly) looking for love in Los Angeles. Merchant's well-known for his frequent collaborations with Ricky Gervais, including co-creating the original British The Office and co-directing and co-starring in Extras. Hello Ladies, at least is getting a comedy special as a sort of wrap-up, though it has not yet been announced when that will air.

HBO recently premiered the Jonathan Groff-starring comedy Looking, and already renewed Girls for a fourth season. Despite their Girls lead-in, though Looking premiered to an audience of only about 338,000 viewers, markedly less than Hello Ladies' 463,000 for their first episode.

Image: HBO