NBC has canceled The Hunting Party after two seasons, ending the Melissa Roxburgh-led drama just as Universal Television prepares to shop it to other outlets. The network had held the decision until after the upfronts, and Roxburgh’s series is now the last remaining broadcast title from the 2025-26 season whose fate has been settled.
The cancellation is landing now because NBC has locked in its 2026-27 scripted lineup and left the show out of it. The network’s final tally includes four new scripted series and three cancellations, with The Hunting Party being replaced by Law & Order next fall in the Thursday 10 p.m. slot behind Law & Order: SVU.
For Roxburgh, that means a series that had already gotten a second wind on streaming is still not enough to survive on NBC’s schedule. The show launched on Netflix in the U.S. in February and drew strong viewership there, and NBC also kept it alive long enough to consider a third season on linear TV and even a move to Peacock. But the exposure did not translate into meaningful ratings gains on NBC in season two, where the drama stayed relatively flat even after the Netflix boost.
That mismatch is what made the call so difficult. NBC and Peacock share programming leadership, so the series had more paths to a renewal than many canceled shows, and the streaming performance gave it a longer runway than its linear numbers alone would have. But the network still had to make room for new projects, and NBC entertainment chief Jeff Bader said last month the goal was to do better in that time period and grow the network.
The problem was never that the show was rejected outright. Bader made clear that there was nothing negative about The Hunting Party, but that NBC needed a stronger performer for its linear schedule and a tighter use of time periods across a grid crowded by sports and returning franchises. In that setting, the drama became expendable even after it had survived longer than most bubble shows.
Universal Television will now try to find another home for the series, but there is no pickup yet. If another outlet wants it, Roxburgh’s show could keep going; if not, NBC’s decision closes the door on a drama that found viewers in streaming but never fully converted that attention into a ratings case strong enough to keep it on the network.
