After three seasons on Max, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled “The Sex Lives of College Girls” in March. In 2022, The CW’s “Charmed” reboot fell to the same fate.
Many TV shows centered on characters in college like these have stopped production. However, college shows are not all gone.
“Gen V,” originally titled “The Boys Presidents: Diabolical” is a superhero TV show set in America’s only college for adult superheroes. The show was announced in 2020 after “The Boys” successfully launched its second season.
The release date of “Gen V” Season Two is yet to be announced, but production wrapped in October 2024. Filming was delayed due to the death of one of the stars, Chance Perdomo, and the second season will likely be a tribute to his character.
“Deaf U” is another college-centered TV show that has not been canceled. The show follows Deaf students at Gallaudet University and offers insight into the students’ lives.
Although the show has not been canceled, it has also not been renewed for a second season. The show’s producer, Nyle DiMarco, talked about his intentions with the show and the plan to discuss other issues in the future. This gives hope to the fans that Netflix will be renewing the show and creating more of this positivity.
Another Netflix TV show set in college is “Miseducation.” The show is about a woman who has been canceled due to her mother’s corruption and flees to Grahamstown University to reinvent herself.
Season One came out in 2023; however, Season Two was delayed from its 2024 scheduled release date. The production has not scheduled a release date, but the season is being filmed now.
Hulu has a hand in college shows, as it renewed “Tell Me Lies” at the end of 2024 for a third season. The news came only two months after the end of the second season, when the cliffhangers had fans dying for the resolution.
The show is deemed one of the best original TV shows for streamers. The second season picks up after the summer vacation of two college students who are intertwined in an extremely addictive relationship.
The reason for fewer collegiate TV shows is colleges require a more niche setting, and networks worry about alienating viewers. Around 62% of high school graduates advance to secondary school, while the graduation rate for high school is 91%. This forces high school shows to naturally be more accessible than collegiate ones.
Since college gives students more freedom than high school, creators have more options for storylines. However, colleges can also be large and have many potential aspects shows can cover. College students’ lives overlap with other groups more often as well, making characters harder to follow when they are introduced occasionally.
The ages of college students are also a reason for the lack of collegiate television. These students are too young to be living adult lives but too old to be learning how to grow up.
Despite the difficulty, there have been successful college-centered TV shows such as “Community.” The six-season show ended in 2015 and currently holds an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The show follows seven adults who go back to community college and become a group of friends who act like family. Fans enjoyed the series’ witty writing and its realistic community college experience.
Fans enjoyed the series enough to make Peacock release a movie for “Community” in the future, finally wrapping up the show with a satisfying ending for fans.
Through cancellations and complexities, some collegiate TV shows prevail. Fans of these shows determine the continuation of production, so only they know the future of collegiate television.
