‘The Good Cop’ Never Stood A Chance On Netflix

The most interesting tidbit I learned when I interviewed The Good Cop creator Andy Breckman here on Decider last month is that Netflix has specifically told him that they considered his show an “experiment.” That phrasing surprised me at first, given the fact that the show was anything but experimental; it was a family-friendly, lightly comic mystery show along the lines of Breckman’s last show, Monk.

But then I thought about it, and it made a lot of sense. Which is why it’s not a surprise to hear that Netflix canceled the show less than two months after its first season debuted on the service. To be honest, as much as I enjoyed the show and the chemistry of its leads, Tony Danza and Josh Groban, I knew the show had less than a snowball’s chance on the streamer.

Shows like The Good Cop, that look and feel like shows that could easily be found on broadcast networks or basic cable, don’t really have a place on the streaming channels… at least not yet.

While not knowing exactly the audience demographics and numbers, because Netflix and the other streamers don’t release them, what we know is that people look to streaming services for two types of shows: 1) Challenging, bingeable series that suck you into a story, or 2) TV comfort food. The Good Cop was firmly in the second category, as Breckman told me: “We don’t want to make Nanna uncomfortable.”

But shows that are comfort food have a much bigger hill to climb, because they’re competing with shows that already have built-in audiences. There’s a reason why Friends, a show that ended 14 years ago, is still one of Netflix’s most popular shows, if not the most popular. It’s a show that comes with a history, one that interests both its built-in fanbase and the millennials who may have not watched it the first time around. Same with The Office; people want to settle down and revisit the folks at Dunder Mifflin and watch the best episodes over and over.

There is a definite desire among viewers, faced with a dizzying choice of new shows, to just sit and rewatch their favorites rather than get into a new show. So for a new show on streaming to generate any kind of interest, it needs to have a stand-out premise, or buzzworthy stars, and sometimes that doesn’t even work: Julia Roberts made a TV show for the first time ever, yet we don’t hear much about Homecoming two weeks after it came out. People who sampled The Good Cop likely thought, “Oh, this is nice,” but figured they could watch Monk instead and at least follow a character they know.

Netflix and Amazon have both spent 2018 making originals that appeal to broader audiences, in both content and format. But evidence is showing that it’s not always the best way to go, because it’s so hard for an unknown title to build an audience. It’s why 30 Rock is popular on Netflix but Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt got the axe after four seasons. It’s why Fuller House does well but Everything Sucks doesn’t last more than a season. When given the choice of something new that feels like comfort food, and something you know is comfort food, viewers tend to pick the known over the unknown. And that’s not going to change for a long time.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.