AMC Renews ‘The Killing’

AMC has renewed “The Killing” for a second season. The show debuted to great numbers (4.7 million viewers), but has since tapered off to about 2.2 million viewers among complaints about nonsensical red herrings, slowness, excessive rain, and creepy cops who would never actually act that way. Some analysis from Alan Sepinwall:

Why did AMC renew it and keep showrunner Veena Sud in charge? First, TV is a business, and even a snooty boutique channel like AMC can’t just discard a show that pulls in good numbers. (Its ratings are higher, in general, than what “Breaking Bad” season 3 pulled, for instance.)

Second, these last couple of episodes have been much better… and AMC executives have seen the finale and likely heard Sud’s pitch for what season 2 will be like. It’s entirely possible that for all the early missteps, Sud sticks the landing next week, and/or that her season 2 pitch acknowledged some of those missteps and talked about how they’d be avoided in the future.

Although I’m part of the audience that dropped off when the show hit its midseason slump, “The Killing” is still better than most scripted programs, so I’m definitely interested in seeing what a second season might entail. Especially if Detective Sarah Linden moves to Los Angeles and gets glammed up and solves a murder every week. Maybe they can rename it “The Killing: SVU.”

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