Time to pour one out for Suits LA. Via Deadline, we’ve learned that NBC has canceled the high-profile legal drama after just one season on the air. The series was a spin-off of the beloved USA Network series Suits, and featured former Arrow star Stephen Amell in a lead role as Ted Black. The show garnered decent viewership for its premiere episode. However, the series from Aaron Korsh, who created the original Suits, never gained much viewership. Suits LA landed at just around a million viewers a week and we guess that’s what led to it getting canceled. The show aired on Sunday nights, which is a competitive time.
The original Suits series was a huge draw on the USA Network, and ran from 2011-2019, for nine whole seasons. After it ended, the original Suits received a huge resurgence on Netflix. There, it found a whole new audience, becoming a big hit for the streaming giant. This prompted NBC to give the new version a try. However, what is huge on basic cable and streaming does not always translate to a regular network audience. And ultimately, the now-canceled Suits LA failed to get the Sunday night linear TV crowd to give it a chance. This is despite original Suits cast members like Gabriel Macht, Rick Hoffman, and David Costabile returning to their roles for several episodes.
The network did its best to increase viewership. They even went as far as staging a “Thursday night Suits LA takeover” with a three-hour marathon of repeats. But that didn’t do enough to get a new audience to check it out.
Jeff Bader, NBC’s president of programming strategy shared, “It’s so hard to talk about shows and which ones you bring back. Suits (LA) has had a very short run, but it really just has not resonated the way we thought it would. There can be many, many reasons — people are speculating why it hasn’t resonated, but it’s just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future, unfortunately.”
Bader further shared, “Those are the decisions we have to make. We have to look at the performance of the shows both on linear and on digital. We have to see the ones that look like they have growth potential in the future. So we’re looking at how stable they are in their linear performance, how stable they are on digital, which ones are growing, which ones are declining — and we had to make some hard decisions.”
According to the programming strategy head, NBC’s decision makers did discuss moving Suits LA to Peacock. But it just wasn’t meant to be.
Of course, if Suits LA finds eventual viewership on Netflix or another streamer, it might have a future down the line, even given its currently canceled state. It just probably won’t be a future on NBC. Suits LA also starred Scott Davis, Josh McDermitt, Bryan Greenberg, Troy Winbush, Rachelle Goulding, Azita Ghanizada, Maggie Grace, and Alice Lee.
Originally published on May 9, 2025.