The Duchess Cancelled at Netflix After One Season

Katherine Ryan’s raunchy comedy-drama The Duchess has been canceled after a single six-episode season at Netflix. Created, written by, and starring Ryan (Netflix’s Katherine Ryan: Glitter Room) as single mom Katherine, The Duchess follows Katherine’s attempt to juggle a career as a ceramics artist, her tween daughter Olive (Katy Byrne), and a relationship with orthodontist boyfriend Evan (Steen Raskopoulos, Netflix’s Feel Good) as she considers getting pregnant with help from her off-the-grid ex, Shep (Versailles‘ Rory Keenan).

“[Netflix] didn’t want to make any more, not enough people watched it. I think something like 10 million people watched it in 28 days and that wasn’t enough,” Ryan said on Vicky Pattison’s The Secret To podcast. “But also, I’m not terribly sad about it. I feel like it’s a whole lot of work, a whole lot of time to make a sitcom. I was so grateful to able to make it, but I think it speaks for itself. I kind of like the way it ended.”

“I think it’s fine, for me, if it sits on the platform, almost like a film,” Ryan added of the six-episode series that released on Netflix in September 2020. “I’m really chill with things. I don’t want to seem too happy about it, but I’m glad.”

In September, Ryan revealed she had already started planning a second season of The Duchess:

“I’m writing the second series anticipating that hopefully I will get to do a second series but I still have so much to say. And of course, dealing with a child, they enter new phases of their lives so quickly and parents have to adapt to that so I think there’s lots more story to tell, but it depends on whether or not people watch it,” Ryan told The Sun. “I have lots of narrative ideas for the story in the future. I think us being young women during the girl band/boy band boom, seeing Tru Say reunited and hopefully watching Shep emboldened by the love of a good woman and do a whole reunion tour, I would love to see Shep on top. I would love to see what happens with that relationship, there are many avenues it could go down.”

Deadline reported in March that Ryan is in the early stages of creating a new comedy streaming series, Backstage With Katherine Ryan, for Amazon. All six episodes of The Duchess are available for streaming on Netflix.