As much of our recent TV coverage suggests, we are big fans of HBO’s Enlightened. So it is our great pleasure to bring you the news that Laura Dern and Mike White’s sitcom about life post-nervous breakdown has been renewed despite garnering an average viewership of only 210,000. The network’s decision comes less than a week after the Enlightened scored two Golden Globe nominations, one for Best Comedy and an acting nod for Dern. We’re guessing the renewal comes as a happy surprise to White, who told the LA Times last week that he was “happily shocked” by the nominations but that — despite the Golden Globe boost — he still expected he’d have to “grovel” for a second season.
Now for some news we’re not so excited about: our beloved Bored to Death has been canceled (along with Hung and How to Make It in America, which never really did much for us). Apparently, although we don’t remember hearing much about how small its audience was, just 240,000 people were tuning in to any given episode of Jonathan Ames’ Brooklyn-based detective comedy.
We don’t know whether to cheer or cry, so instead we’re just going to focus on how excited we are for what may be the next great HBO sitcom, Girls .