The cancellation of Not Suitable For Work after one season has hit fans like a truck. While we’ve all had a TV fave ripped away from us far too soon (I’m looking at you My Lady Jane), this cancellation feels different. It’s a warning flare for the kind of messy, horny, occasionally mortifying twenty-something TV that has made streaming feel genuinely fun again.
Hulu has opted not to renew Mindy Kaling’s comedy for a second season, just two months after its first season ended. The series followed five young professionals in New York navigating jobs, friendships, romance and rent. The first season ended with multiple cliffhangers, a Giggly Squad cameo and a bubbling love triangle that will now haunt me for years to come.
@pedestriantv “Two of the most effortlessly funny people I know.” #notsuitableforwork #mindykaling #paigedesorbo #hannahberner #gigglysquad @Paige DeSorbo @Hannah Berner
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The show was not universally adored by critics. Not Suitable For Work holds a 54 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, while its audience score sits at 82 per cent. It did have its issues — some accused the show of being out of touch and romanticising corporate America. It reportedly averaged about 800,000 viewers across its first five episodes after 11 days, a figure described by Variety as among Hulu’s lowest-rated programs since 2005.
Despite various qualms there was absolutely an audience warming to it, even if the show had not yet become a full-scale streaming event.
@annamason24 to tell you i’m devastated would be an understatement…. MINDY KAHLING TELL US EVERYTHING PLEASE !!!!!! #notsuitableforwork #mindykahling #hulu #streaming #tv
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And that is the problem, not every comedy announces itself as an instant classic. Sometimes a show needs time to settle into its characters, learn which dynamics work and let viewers find it without requiring everyone to have read a bestselling novel first.
The last few years have offered a genuinely enjoyable wave of twenty-something shows. Adults, Overcompensating and Imma chuck Sterling Point in there, are different beasts, but they share a willingness to let young people be complicated, broke, horny, overly online and, occasionally, deeply annoying. Which is to say: recognisable.
They also feel like they were made by people who understand that Gen Z does not speak exclusively in TikTok slop or run exclusively on oat milk-iced matchas (we drink coffee too). The characters make jokes about sex, money, work and their own terrible choices. They are politically aware without sounding like a producer is having an aneurysm off screen about brand safety.
At a time when there is endless chatter about Gen Z becoming more conservative, it has been refreshing to see shows that are not afraid to be a bit filthy, emotionally direct and interested in the awkwardness of growing up. Not Suitable For Work was far from perfect, but its premise was clear: your twenties can be chaotic, humiliating and very funny. You can be ambitious and still have no clue what you are doing. You can have a career plan and then immediately set it on fire because someone tall texted you.
When I spoke to Kaling for PEDESTRIAN.TV before the show premiered, she explained that she had put parts of herself into each of the five leads.
“The joy of making a TV show is that I get to infuse different parts of my personality, the good and the bad, into all of the characters,” she told P.TV.
She described relating to Davis’s “longing and this neediness to be loved at that age”, particularly the desire for a first serious relationship “so you can prove to people that there’s nothing wrong with you”. It is a very specific early-twenties feeling: wanting to appear completely fine while privately treating every minor romantic interaction like a judgement on your entire worth. It was yearn city, helloooo!
Kaling also spoke about writing women’s anger, particularly the pressure on Asian women to suppress it. “I love writing about the rage that women feel that they cannot express,” she said.
That emotional messiness was part of what made NSFW work. Abby (Avantika Vandanapu) could be polished and furious, while AJ (Ella Hunt) could be ambitious and out of her depth and everyone could make the incredibly wrong call for reasons that made perfect sense in the moment. It was not always subtle, but neither are your twenties.
Historically, television has allowed comedies space to become themselves. Parks and Recreation had a first season that was criticised for feeling too much like The Office before it reworked Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), expanded its ensemble and became a beloved workplace comedy and my fave gardening show. The Office itself started with a short, awkward first season that stuck more closely to the tone of the British original before it developed into something warmer and distinct. I personally had to try out Schitt’s Creek three times to make it through (and understand) season one in order to get the rest of the show which is a masterpiece.
The idea that a comedy might need a few episodes to figure itself out was not once treated as a moral failing.
This is not an argument that every underperforming show should be granted indefinite life support. Sometimes a series does not find its footing, and that is television. We have been saved from enduring more of some truly terrible shows. But original comedies without book-fandom hype, a recognisable intellectual property label or a cast of household names are now being asked to arrive fully formed, instantly beloved, perfectly marketable and capable of triggering discourse before the opening credits have ended.
Meanwhile, adaptations and reboots arrive with their fandoms pre-loaded. They have readers or die-hard fans who already know the characters, built-in social-media discussion and a marketing hook that can be explained in four words: “It’s based on the book”. Original storytelling has to work much harder just to get people to press play.
It’s not like Hulu is even against a multi-season moment. The streamer currently has 22 seasons and 466 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy available to watch, meaning Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) has had approximately 253,863 opportunities to endure an absurdly stressful day at work.
So, yes, there is room for a show to last. The question is which ones get that chance.
Hulu / Disney+ already had Adults on its roster, but surely a platform can support more than one series about people in their twenties. Prime Video has made a noticeable habit of commissioning YA fare. Hulu and Disney+ could have owned the slightly older, sharper and more adult version of that space: stories about the post-uni years, the early career grind and the humiliating gap between how put-together you look online and how little you understand your superannuation.
Instead, Not Suitable For Work has been cancelled after one season, with its characters left suspended in romantic and professional chaos. Warner Bros. Television is reportedly shopping the series elsewhere, so there may still be hope for a second life.
But the cancellation should still worry anyone invested in original young-adult television. If streamers keep giving new shows barely enough time to establish an audience, viewers may eventually stop investing in them altogether. Why fall in love with a messy group of fictional twenty-somethings when there is every chance they will be gone before they have even made it through their first proper workplace meltdown?
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