Even before it hit the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), prestige tv would be affected by 2020. There would be no new season of True Detective on HBO; Homeland will finish her career at Showtime; Veep had already retired until mid-2019.
When COVID-19 forced production to shut down in the industry, it meant delaying some or all of some wonderful exhibits, adding two broadcasts on HBO. The list includes Barry, the hit-it-go comedy by Bill Hader and Succession, the drama series that peaked in Season 2.
While other people still spend a lot of time indoors in 2020, enthusiasts of quality TV series have discovered the sea game of surfing on streaming platforms in search of something different. If that’s what you’re talking about, the mystery of Hulu Chance (2016-17) starring Hugh Laurie deserves to be on your list.
For those who have never heard of Chance, we’ll start from the beginning. Kem Nunn, the one from Tapping the Source (an inspiration for the legendary surf film Point Break), released his best-selling novel Chance in 2014. The e-book followed a dark twist in the life of Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatist who lives in San Francisco.
In 2016, Chance was in a position to remedie his TELEVISION series with Laurie leading and Gretchen Mol (Boardwalk Empire), Clarke Peters (The Wire) and Ethan Suplee (Motherless Brooklyn) in supporting roles. Control of Laurie and Nunn came with Alexandra Cunningham, with whom Nunn wrote the script.
Dan Attias (House, The Wire, The Americans) and other top-notch administrators brought the scripts to life. In Season 1, Chance found himself in the crosshairs of a corrupt police detective who is the husband of Mol’s character, a troubled Chance patient who possibly has a personality disorder.
Mol’s character delivered the femme fatale thing in what turned out to be a captivating mystery of Nunn’s pen. And Chance writers continued to go through Season 2 (20 episodes in total), when a psychotic tech mogul entered the scene.
If you read Chance reviews, look for many favorable reviews as well as some combined reviews of the missing series. (It garnered 75% of critics and 84% of the audience on the Rotten Tomatoes website). Therefore, it is not entirely transparent how the series seemed to arrive and go completely unnoticed.
However, a farewell from Chance gave the impression that The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 gives a clue. Describing the series as “an iconic victim of the Peak TV era,” Tim Goodman argued that Chance had been lost by combining so many series that run on so many other broadcast services.
Since Hulu had the same point of interest in 2016, this is a smart argument. The screen suffers from any below-average functionality. Meanwhile, he has a heavyweight (Laurie) in the lead role and convincing functionality of Suplee as a violent right-hand man.
You can argue that Get Shorty, broadcast on Epix from 2017 to 19, had a similar fate. No one who recognized his lifestyle when it turned out to be one perfect episode after another. Like Get Shorty, Chance deserved a lot more eyes. But it’s more late than ever, especially if you have a trial subscription to resell.