Training Day: Why Was The TV Series Canceled? Here's What We Know
A TV series based on the 2001 classic "Training Day" is a pretty good idea. The film, which stars Denzel Washington as a corrupt police officer mentoring Ethan Hawke on his first day on the job, has the bones of a procedural with an unusual edge thanks to the sinister nature of Alonzo Harris (Washington), who serves as a combination protagonist and antagonist.
In 2017, that potential was finally realized, with a CBS series set some 15 years after the events of the original movie. Bill Paxton plays Frank Roarke, a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Investigation Section who takes Kyle Craig (Justin Cornwell) under his wing, not knowing that Craig is working undercover for an internal investigation into Roarke's shady activities. But with such intrigue, what led to the TV series being canceled?
Tragically, series star Paxton died in February of 2017, the same time that the show (the last Paxton was in before he died) was premiering on CBS. That undoubtedly contributed to its eventual cancellation a few months later, but low viewership numbers reported at the time mean that it was probably on borrowed time even apart from the death of the beloved actor.
Training Day never found an audience after the death of Bill Paxton
A 2017 Deadline article on the cancellation of "Training Day" cites its "slow start" in the ratings. 4.7 million viewers tuned in for the first episode, with subsequent episodes declining in viewership, followed by a brief uptick in viewers after the death of Bill Paxton. Unfortunately for the show, fans tuning in to see one of Paxton's last screen performances were evidently not compelled to keep watching, since ratings continued to slide down. And with the tragic, untimely death of its lead actor, the network had little reason to take a chance on the show finding an audience later on, since it would have had to be completely retooled anyway.
And so, the TV series "Training Day" ran for one season of 13 episodes, and will likely continue to exist mostly as a footnote to the original movie, as well as the career of the late, great Bill Paxton.