David Farnor | On 17, May 2018

Hap and Leonard has been cancelled after three seasons.

SundanceTV’s superb seres, which is based on Joe R. Lansdale’s novels, has been one of the best TV programmes of the last few years, thanks to its combination of powerful stories and an even more powerful friendship between its two titular characters. Played by James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams, the duo are an East Texas white guy with a weakness for Southern women, and a gay, black Vietnam vet with a hot temper. Together, they find themselves in muddy, often violent, and frequently hilarious waters, as they navigate a string of swamp noir thrillers.

The anthology based each season on a different novel, starting with Savage Season and Mucho Mojo, before its recently finished run adapted from The Two-Bear Mambo.

“Hap and Leonard’s screenplay makes every twist and shift in tone feel like an organic extension of their characters: eccentric, sinister, sweet and faintly poignant,” we wrote in our reviews of Season 2.

Within a month of Season 3 finishing, though, SundanceTV has announced that it has not renewed the series for a fourth.

Showrunner John Wirth tweeted thanks to the “cast, crew, producers, writers, directors and especially our diehard FANS for 3 seasons of Hap and Leonard”. “We will not be back,” he added.

Lansdale also posted on Facebook: “Hap and Leonard officially canceled. Sundance’s highest rated show, 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Three Seasons wraps it up, dudes. It was an honor to have worked with the folks on the show, actors, crew, writers, and thanks for putting up with grumpy me. Wish there were more seasons, but hey, we got three, and they were very fine indeed.”

The good news is that those three seasons are all on Amazon Prime Video. You can read our reviews of them here.

 

 

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