Togetherness has always been a bit of a tough sell. The premise itself is relatively slight: a middle class white family in Los Angeles who do not own a funeral home and who are not the family inTransparent have a hard time adhering to the show’s title. The slice-of-life series has, however, cultivated specific and interesting characters, and its cast (especially Amanda Peet and the always superb Melanie Lynskey) is fantastic, and the show fared well among critics. But apparently that couldn’t save it from cancellation, and now, with its second season still airing on Sunday nights, HBO has decided that it will not be returning for a third.
Mark Duplass announced the news via a tweeted letter to fans, also signed by his co-creator brother Jay (who is on Transparent) and Steve Zissis, one of the show’s stars (playing Alex, the Piersen family’s often sad actor friend) and writers:
HBO officially confirmed the news in Deadline, referring to their other Duplass project (the animated series Animals):
Although we have decided not to proceed with another season of Togetherness, we look forward to continuing our strong creative collaboration with the talented Jay and Mark Duplass.
Deadline describes the unsurprising reason behind the cancellation — bad, and in fact declining, ratings. The series premiere allegedly had 427,000 Live+Same Day viewers, while this season it’s been down to 330,000 on average.