Entertainment

Watch This While Waiting For 'What Happens At The Abbey' Season 2

by Kayla Hawkins
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

In the new series What Happens at the Abbey, E! takes a look inside one of Los Angeles' most famous gay nightclubs, documenting how the regular people who work at and frequent the club are as high-maintenance as the celebrities who stop by. So, essentially, it's Vanderpump Rules, but with a more beloved location and an ensemble of characters that haven't become reality TV icons just yet. But after a promising first season, there’s one remaining question: will What Happens at the Abbey return for Season 2? If the show does return, it will probably be back in the spring of 2018, about a year after it premiered, but the network hasn’t made any decisions or any announcements about Season 2.

The show has plenty of fans on Twitter, but the show's reach seems limited to social media users, because according to Showbuzz Daily, What Happens at the Abbey only received 0.22 million 18-49 viewers for a recent episode, which is low compared to Keeping Up with the Kardashians' 0.63 million on the same night. But while KUWTK's ratings are far higher than the newer series, the famous franchise has also been experiencing a ratings dip in Season 13. So there may be no reason for concern over What Happens at the Abbey's modest audience size.

But even though the future of What Happens at the Abbey is still unclear, the future of television is very crowded. There are still dozens of shows premiering all summer long, and if you loved the look behind the scenes at the Abbey, you may appreciate these suggestions for more shows that have confirmed premieres while What Happens at the Abbey is in the offseason.

Life Of Kylie

Hate changing the channel? Well, after several days of watching E! News, you’ll see the network’s newest original reality series when it debuts on Aug. 6. As the most popular member of the famous Kardashian/Jenner family, the network will be waiting to see if Instagram and Snapchat followers means a popular and interesting series.

Gay For Play

As the reigning Outstanding Host for a Reality Show Emmy winner, RuPaul is basically the king — and, while hosting RuPaul’s Drag Race, queen — of reality TV, and a venerated member of the LGBT community who's been on TV for decades, long before What Happens on the Abbey. But Ru has a second gig hosting this competition, back on June 29, which was ever-so-slightly ahead of the retro game show trend. And while it’s not as beloved or as perfectly produced as his namesake show, it's a very breezy 22 minutes of pop culture bliss.

Hair Goddess

I am obsessed with the mainstream adoption of wigs, weaves, and extensions over the past decade, so TLC's new series, debuting June 28, looks fascinating. If you’re anything like me, then you’ll probably be equally enthralled that this young woman, who sounds exactly like Ellen Greene’s Audrey voice in Little Shop of Horrors, is one of the most successful purveyors of fake hair to celebrities.

WAGS Miami & WAGS LA

Brian Bowen Smith/Tommy Garcia/E! Entertainment

Look behind the curtain of the cutthroat professional athlete dating scene and find a group of women who are always prepared with a retort to anyone who dares judge their lifestyle and have a preternatural ability to find the perfect selfie lighting. If you love getting a look at unique subcultures, especially ones where there’s a chance the subjects will have alcohol-fueled screaming fights, both outposts of this franchise, premiering on June 29 and Aug. 24, should fit the bill.

Bar Rescue

No, the Abbey doesn't need Jon Taffer to overhaul their business — any club with its own reality show is quite successful. But, if watching What Happens at the Abbey makes you curious about owning and operating a successful establishment, watch the fifth season of this series on July 2, and learn everything there is to know about how not to manage a bar.

The Challenge XXX: Dirty Thirty

The Real World franchise began as a place to see genuinely different people come together. Then, it became a way for 20-somethings to get famous by drunkenly carousing in a rented mansion. Now, it’s somehow transformed its spinoff, formerly The Real World Road Rules Challenge, into an athletically intense endurance contest visited and revisited by a beloved group of regular competitors that will be back on July 18. And it’s the most entertaining ten weeks on television, if your biggest complaint about sports is that rival athletes don’t spend their off-court time hooking up or plotting to destroy one another.

So, no matter what happens to the Abbey, TV's got your back.