HBO Scratches Scorsese/Jagger Music Drama ‘Vinyl’ After 1 Season

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You won’t be seeing the revived Max’s Kansas City or other exotic throwback sets around the Lower East Side anymore. Or casting calls asking for extras. Vinyl was scratched from the HBO roster this week after a mere ten episodes on the network. The highly polarizing period piece (you either loved or loathed it) was produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, and focused on the record business in the 1970s.

“After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with a second season of ‘Vinyl.’ Obviously, this was not an easy decision,” HBO said in a statement. “We have enormous respect for the creative team and cast for their hard work and passion on this project.”

Here’s more from a report in Variety:

HBO gave the show a second season renewal after its premiere in February. But by the end of the series’ run in April, HBO announced a showrunner change for season two, with Scott Z. Burns replacing creator Terence Winter. Burns was still in the early stage of working out a blueprint for season two and had not turned in any scripts.

The decision to pull the plug entirely comes after HBO has undergone a big transition in its programming ranks. Last month, Michael Lombardo stepped down after nearly 10 years as programming president and was replaced by Casey Bloys, HBO’s former head of comedy.

We admittedly consumed all ten episodes. Verdict was simple: at its best, Vinyl was great, such as casting Andrew Dice Clay and Ray Romano. However, there were way too many impostor cameos, cliche sub-plots, and industry name-dropping to handle. On the bright side, however, the music soundtrack was great.

Our opinion doesn’t really matter, though. Especially when one of the era’s luminaries, on whom the series is partially based, voiced his. Richard Hell wrote a scathing review of Vinyl on Stereogum earlier this year. Here’s a quick hit:

I don’t want to be too hard on Vinyl. I thought it was boring, I thought it was innocuous trash, but I may not be objective. A major selling point of the show is its setting in the 1970s New York music scene, wherein were born punk and hip-hop and much of disco. Fascination with down and dirty, crazed, but semi-glamorous, ’70s New York has been durable. I was a part of the punk emergence back then, and the main character in one of the many subplots of the series is partly based on me. That had a lot to do with my getting invited to write this review, and agreeing to. But the show isn’t really about music, it’s about business, and business as understood by Martin Scorsese.