NBC Axes The Hunting Party After Two Seasons — but It May Not Be Gone for Good

Well, here we are again: another US network drama bites the dust, but with just enough oddness in the details to make it more interesting than your usual cancellation story. NBC has decided to pull the plug on The Hunting Party after two seasons. You might know it as the one where former FBI profiler Rebecca 'Bex' Henderson spends her days and nights chasing down escapees from a secret government lock-up called The Pit—because clearly, there aren't enough American dramas obsessed with shadowy prisons and renegade agents.

It's Officially Over at NBC, But the Studio Isn't Giving Up

The series, led by Melissa Roxburgh, wrapped up on 7 May and, to be fair, always felt a bit like it was fighting for attention. Despite a loyal crowd sticking with it, the ratings on 'linear' telly (that's good old-fashioned scheduled TV, for those not fluent in network-speak) never took off. The final decision came as NBC locked in its plans for the 2026-2027 seasons. The slot that previously belonged to The Hunting Party is now reserved for old reliable—yep, Law & Order is muscling in.

Jeff Bader, who holds the catchy title of President of Program Planning Strategy over at NBCUniversal, put the logic like this:

'We’re looking for places where we can grow the network, and that is a time period where we think we can do better. Nothing negative about Hunting Party, but for our linear schedule, we absolutely need to try and do a little bit better there.'

Translation: the show wasn't tanking, but in a lineup jammed with live sport and bigger brands, it needed to do more than just hold steady numbers. And, well, it didn’t.

What Was The Hunting Party?

If you missed it (and the majority did, let’s be real), here’s the gist: Roxburgh starred as Rebecca 'Bex' Henderson, ex-FBI turned leader of a team chasing prison escapees. This lot wasn’t knocking on cell doors at the local station—'The Pit' was an off-the-books government site supposedly so secret it might as well have been on the moon. Alongside Roxburgh, the cast included Nick Wechsler, Patrick Sabongui, Josh McKenzie, and Sara Garcia. The brains behind it all were JJ Bailey and Jake Coburn, running the show in tandem.

Now the Strange Bit: Universal Won't Let It Die

Here’s where it goes a bit off-script for your run-of-the-mill procedural: Universal Television, who produce The Hunting Party, aren’t keen to just toss the whole thing onto the TV scrapheap. Instead, they’re actively gearing up to shop the series around—top of the list, believe it or not, is Netflix.

• Netflix actually picked up US streaming rights already and saw a proper jump in viewership when the first season dropped on the platform in February.
• This gave The Hunting Party a streaming 'halo effect', even boosting numbers on Peacock (NBC's in-house service), where it had been doing a slow simmer anyway.
• International sales and the licensing fee meant it wasn’t a total money pit—the extra revenue took the sting out of underwhelming broadcast numbers.
• Apparently, NBC did look at keeping The Hunting Party for a third season, and even kicked the tyres on making it a Peacock exclusive—the sums didn’t pan out in either case.

For those wondering why cancel instead of just shoving it onto Peacock full time: it comes down (predictably) to money. Loads of number-crunching, various scenarios floated, but in the end, neither made financial sense for the folks at NBC.

Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess. But if you fancy a binge of prison escapes and secret government headaches, Netflix might just be your next stop soon enough.