NBC’s freshman series Constantine is back where it was weeks before its winter-hiatus: Near cancellation.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Constantine‘s return hailed just 3.1 million viewers on Friday night, and if you do not get Game of Thrones-caliber numbers on a night no one watches TV you deserve to get verbally slapped in the form of an excuse at a TCA press tour. That’s how this business works, right?
From EW:
“Still talking about [whether to renew the show],” Salke said. “We wish the show had done better live. It has a big viewership after [live airings] in all kinds of ways, and it has a younger audience. The live number is challenging. It hasn’t kind of come out of Grimm the way we wanted it to. We love the show. I think it’s fair to say we’re really still talking about it.”
Added Greenblatt: “We got on the bandwagon of these shows based on comic books, and maybe there are too many of them. It’s a popular series of comics, but it’s not The Flash. It’s not Batman, so maybe it suffers a little bit there. But as Jen said, it’s a show we really liked. We love Matt Ryan, who is the star of it. I think we did right by the fans who didn’t like the film that was made of it, and I think the future is still up in the air on that show.”
Holy misguided notions, Batman! In what galaxy did NBC think Constantine is a superhero? Yes, he’s in comic books, and yes, he’s had some outings with guys like Batman. But a superhero? The fuck, NBC? Lesson learned: Our basic understanding of geek culture still has a long, long, long way to go.
And what a shame too, because the return episode fucking ROCKED.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ERukJvW6g
Their mention of Grimm is on the right path, but saying Constantine is failing because there are too many superhero shows on the market is way off the mark. It’s not like The Flash because before the show, people vaguely knew the character. No one knew who Constantine was, and even now they still don’t know. The 2005 movie flopped and left no pop culture footprint, so NBC had a totally fresh slate. People didn’t know or care about Constantine and NBC had the chance to make them.
Constantine and his world should be the farthest things you can think of when you think of “superhero.” Did they choose Constantine because they thought it would be like Batman, except British and a Sex Pistols fanboy? If they did then this whole thing was a mistake from the start. Dark fantasy. Gothic horror. That is what should have been in their heads, and that is what their competition should be. Adult fantasy is fairly in vogue despite uneasy acceptance by the mainstream audience; Game of Thrones is as big as it can be, Dragon Age is a really popular video game, Buffy is beloved, but no one gave a shit about I, Frankenstein or Dracula Untold. Only cool people liked Hellboy.
Constantine on broadcast TV should be like The Exorcist mixed with Law & Order — something NBC should be familiar with — while having a punk Han Solo as a lead. It’s a winning formula that’s rather unique, even against the current crop of other supernatural horror shows. They shouldn’t be picking fights against Marvel or The Flash, they should be trading jabs with Supernatural and Penny Dreadful.
But they do have an audience. The buzz created at Comic-Con was successful enough that it has become the current underdog favorite. Campaign hashtags are a big sign that something is worth looking into, and #SaveConstantine has made regular appearances just before, during, and after episode airings.
NBC should have known that unless by some drastic paradigm shift in our culture, the macabre aesthetic of Constantine would never let it be the next Batman. Even Batman shed his gothic texture to appeal to mainstream audiences. Take a bow, Christopher Nolan, that’s all you.
As much as I love Constantine and want to keep it going, this loss of faith by NBC proves they went into this kind of blind. I want to believe David Goyer when he told me that people at NBC have been wanting to produce Constantine for years, but I get the feeling it wasn’t a group effort.
From our New York Comic-Con interview with executive producer David Goyer:
“We have an executive at NBC, Perlina, whose been a fan of the character even when she used to work at Showtime with Bob Greenblatt, so she’s been wanting to do a Constantine show ever since then. And Bob Greenblatt came over from Showtime and they came from pay cable sensibility, and watching what’s been happening with cable versus network and clearly network has had to change so I think it’s a comfortable fit. Of all the networks, it’s hard to imagine Constantine working on any of the other networks.”
After these recent events, I almost cringe reading that. Clearly NBC was not the best station for Constantine. Maybe Netflix or premium cable, but broadcast — even on Friday nights — isn’t where the beautiful bastard belongs. Still, I’m not going to lose hope. Here are some “hacks,” because no one in my generation knows what a hack actually is, that NBC can do to keep Constantine.
1) Consider a new air schedule.
Constantine changed its timeslot to an earlier 8 PM, but as you can see that did zilch to help matters. Earlier in the show’s lifespan, comparisons to Hannibal made sense because like it, Constantine is a dark show (not nearly as Hannibal, of course) that found success despite a Friday night slot. But unlike Hannibal, NBC stands to lose money when Constantine performs poorly. NBC has no major stake in Hannibal‘s success or failure due to its foreign investment, but Constantine is produced more traditionally, with the network ponying up dough. In order to make more on their investment, would it be too much if NBC considers a new timeslot for the show’s hopefully-not-unlikely second season? Perhaps Sunday when they’re not competing with non-competitors Arrow and The Flash?
2) Yeah, uh, don’t compete with The Flash or Arrow.
Despite being a DC comics property, Constantine is not a damn superhero. Even in a sanitized vision, Constantine does not and cannot carry himself like a brooding, self-righteous vigilante or a smiling, can-do speedster. His very essence is very unsuperhero-like. So don’t steer the ship into the storm and focus on calmer waters: Appeal to the horror crowd. They may intersect with superheroes, but go after fans of The Walking Dead and American Horror Story without mercy. They may not be big bucks like superheroes, but they’re far more devoted, loyal, and they will reward quality with immortality.
3) You know what? Make Constantine just the fucking worst.
While on the subject of superheroes, make Constantine unique on broadcast TV and actually make him a fucking bastard. Television has embraced anti-heroes since the Age of Tony Soprano, even though they haven’t found a place on broadcast yet. If you truly want to make Constantine a hit, do something different that your supposed competition, super heroes, can’t ever do with their protagonists: Make them terrible. To the show’s credit, they have had him smoke, drink, and sleep around, but there is still a righteousness to Constantine that dulls his edgy vices, making him resemble everyone’s dad in a trenchcoat. Take this opportunity and embrace Constantine’s worst aspects.
4) Build the Justice League Dark now.
Should Constantine be blessed with season two, the show should waste no time and expand the scope of the show. I’ve already stated that the strongest asset Constantine has is its ultimate control of DC’s occult territory. As soon as they can, they must build towards this woefully unexplored side of DC — which hopefully can alter notions of what a “comic book show” can or should be, because The Walking Dead is long past its comic book roots now.
Swamp Thing. Zatanna. Deadman. Shade. Madame Xanadu. Frankenstein. The Spectre, because sometimes you can flip off the comics too. Neither The Flash or Arrow are any closer to bringing us the Justice League. To the producers of Constantine, jump on this chance now. Introduce these freaks to pop culture as soon as possible.
5) More of this. Way more. Give us barrels full of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPGL2iuRDnA
If you build it, they will come. And you’ve built it, NBC. Just clean it up (so to speak) and hold out for people to see.