It’s Saturday morning here at Always Be Watching HQ. I have a couple of news stories to kick-start your weekend and a wrap of the new TV shows that have launched/returned this week.

American Vandal has been cancelled at Netflix after two seasons. Other platforms have expressed an interest in picking up the show. Variety suggests it is part of Netflix’s strategy of producing all of its original series in-house and not relying on third-party production companies.

The culture of transparency at Netflix is an odd-duck. When staff are fired, everyone is advised why, with some fired employees even attending meetings about why they are being moved on. The transparency is so high that internally, staff are able to see how well a show performs - yet there are never any leaks of this information.

RIP the classic movie streaming service FilmStruck. It seems like the shuttering of the service is tied to plans to focus its resources on mass-market entertainment services instead of niche services like FilmStruck.

Two sources familiar with the decision said the plan to kill FilmStruck was made prior to AT&T’s closing the Time Warner deal; in any case, the strategy aligns with the new WarnerMedia blueprint to shift resources to mass-market entertainment services.

What you’re watching this weekend…

This past week saw a few returning series:

  • Dream Corp LLC (Adult Swim)
  • Legends of Tomorrow (The CW)
  • Medici: Masters of Florence (Rai)
  • Midnight Texas (NBC)
  • The Guest Book (TBS)
  • Channel Zero (Syfy)

Debuting in the US this week is Heathers on Paramount Network, which has already been seen in parts of Europe and in Australia. This is a show that is desperate to be subvert expectations of the film it is based on, but fails to do anything interesting in its own right.

Catching a lot of buzz in just a few days since launching on Netflix was the smash BBC series Bodyguard. It’s breathless viewing for the first few episodes. The show seems less interested in building any tension around resolving the drama of the series, which makes for a disappointing final run of episodes, even if there are a bunch of great set pieces within that.

Do give it a look.

But the big new title this week is the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina:

Have a great weekend.