‘61st Street’ Season 2 won’t be shown, AMC says

The second season of AMC’s acclaimed drama series “61st Street,” already shot in Chicago, will not air, the cable channel said Thursday.

The decision was a cost-cutting measure, Variety reports, part of a trend of entertainment companies axing projects even when they’re nearly finished. In the most dramatic example, last summer, Warner Bros. chose to ax its $90 million “Batgirl” movie.

In the first season, which aired last spring, Courtney B. Vance starred as a longtime Cook County public defender who takes on the case of a college-bound track star (Tosin Cole) accused of killing a cop. Aunjanue Ellis, Mark O’Brien and Holt McCallany co-starred.

The series was filmed on the South Side and at the Cinespace Chicago Film Studios on the city’s West Side.

“We did two [seasons], with a weeklong break in between seasons,” Vance told the Sun-Times in 2022. “We shot on the South Side, and I think that gives the show so much. It wasn’t easy, it was a little scary at times, but you have to honor the show. The show is a South Side show.”

Until recently, AMC had been promising “61st Street” would return in 2023, even releasing a trailer for the second season.

An AMC filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December had said its cost-cutting plans would mean some “legacy television series and films ... will no longer be in active rotation on the Company’s linear or digital platforms,” but only this week did it emerge that “61st Street” was among the unlucky programs.

The filing left open the possibility of AMC making money by licensing the show to another TV outlet.