{"id":1456,"date":"2026-06-01T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pomegranatemag.co.uk\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:16:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:16:50","slug":"why-do-lesbian-shows-keep-getting-cancelled-we-know-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pomegranatemag.co.uk\/?p=1456","title":{"rendered":"Why do lesbian shows keep getting cancelled? We know why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You know the feeling of finding a really, really<\/em>, good show. You\u2019re twenty minutes into the first episode, it\u2019s actually funny, well-written, the love interest is leng, and in a rare case the central character is openly lesbian, AND the show doesn’t revolve around her trauma, the dream. You go online, only to find the cancellation announcement from three weeks ago, it\u2019s already over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re a queer person who watches TV, you know what I\u2019m talking about. You\u2019ve probably stopped letting yourself get too attached, what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s go back to 2020, where Netflix cancelled three shows with lesbian leads within a single week. I Am Not Okay With This, The Society, <\/em>and Teenage Bounty Hunters, <\/em>all gone. The reason given was COVID-related production challenges. However, COVID, notably did not cancel Queer Eye<\/em>, or Hearstopper<\/em>, weird? The cancellations had a very specific and highly targeted effect on stories about queer\/lesbian women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Kill<\/em>, a lesbian vampire show, was cancelled two months after its first season dropped. In those two months, it had accumulated 100 million viewing hours on Netflix and sat in their own Top 10 for several weeks running, so why would it be cancelled? Riverdale, <\/em>on the other hand, continued to live on, a show that by that point had its fans begging for it to end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022 was also a sad year for lesbians: The Wilds, Warrior Nun, Gentlemen Jack, A League of Their Own<\/em>, all axed within the same year. And don\u2019t even bring up 2024\u2019s Everything Now <\/em>around me, I\u2019m still at the restaurant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Save Queer Stories, an independent study of over 350 scripted television shows that aired in 2024, half of all queer shows were cancelled that year. They found that queers shows were cancelled more than twice as often as non-queer shows, and were more likely to be axed after just one season. GLAAD has been making similar findings for years, queer women\u2019s stories are cancelled at rates that don\u2019t reflect their viewership, their critical reception, or their cultural impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a direct result of homophobia and misogyny working together in that efficient way that only deeply embedded biases can manage. Gay male narratives have been absorbed into the mainstream palatability, Heated Rivalry<\/em>, a newly beloved cultural classic, will be getting its second season and I doubt it will stop there. Queer male love has been marketed as \u2018safe\u2019 for a broad audience, and this isn\u2019t not <\/em>a win but it has happened at a speed and scale that has not been extended to queer\/lesbian women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesbian relationships onscreen have historically been handled in one of two ways: as tragedy, or as spectacle. The Bury Your Gays trope, that grim tradition of killing off queer characters to generate pathos for straight ones, has been well-documented and widely criticised. But now that trope has evolved, they\u2019ve stopped killing the characters, now they just cancel the show, same message, less blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one might\u2019ve hurt the most, the BBC\u2019s decision to cancel I Kissed a Girl <\/em>(and I Kissed a Boy) <\/em>is the more recent example of a company announcing, with enormous sincerity, that it is exceptionally proud <\/em>of something it is in the process of abandoning. Meanwhile, the straight version of The Ultimatum<\/em> and Love Is Blind <\/em>has international spin-offs, and Love Island<\/em> is a franchise that we now have to watch twice a year. The infrastructure built around straight romantic reality television, the merchandise, the reunions, the spin-offs, the second and third and fourteenth chances, has simply never been extended to its queer equivalent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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