Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi series ‘Paper Girls’ started streaming on the OTT platform from 29th July onwards. And now, six weeks after its premiere, Prime Video is reportedly not moving forward with a second season of ‘Paper Girls’.
The cancellation of the ‘Paper Girls’ series has happened despite the fact that the show had received rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. ‘Paper Girls S1’ currently holds an impressive critics score of 90% and boasts of a ‘Certified Fresh’ status on reviews’ aggregation portal Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score is marginally lower at a still impressive 88%.
Besides, ‘Paper Girls’ has secured a decent IMDb user rating of 7.3/10 and has received generally favorable reviews on another popular reviews’ aggregation website Metacritic. Having said that, ‘Paper Girls’ series couldn’t make it to the coveted Nielsen’s top streaming titles list since its release.
It seems that Amazon Prime Video has underestimated its own show. Because if the ‘Paper Girls’ cancellation decision is merely based on viewing stats and not on how the show has been received by streaming audiences, then the OTT giant should probably rethink its strategy pertaining to cancellations and renewals of its shows.
‘Paper Girls’ dropped on Prime Video on 29th July, that is, in the same month when Netflix’s cult supernatural series ‘Stranger Things’ Season-4 Part-2 had premiered. And considering a rather similar youngster-centric theme with supernatural elements, ‘Paper Girls’ might have been overshadowed by its Netflix counterpart in terms of viewing.
Later, Prime Video’s big-budget series ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ started streaming from 1st September. These two factors might have had an adverse effect on ‘Paper Girls’ viewing stats.
This indicates that in case ‘Paper Girls’ was released much before the arrival of ‘Stranger Things’ Season-4 Part-2 on Netflix or much after ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ dropped on Amazon Prime Video, then more viewers might have watched the show. So, ‘Paper Girls’ is possibly a classic case of a mistimed release of a well-made series on OTT. That’s why, the unfortunate cancellation.
On the brighter side, the show’s co-producer Legendary Television (The Expanse, Carnival Row, Lost in Space) is ostensibly interested in going ahead with ‘Paper Girls’ Season-2. Let’s see what happens on that front.
Based on the comic book series of the same name, the sci-fi show ‘Paper Girls’ follows the adventures of a group of four twelve-year-old girls who encounter time travellers while delivering newspapers in the year 1988. While travelling through different timelines, they meet different versions of themselves and get a chance to change the future. Stay tuned to Binged for the latest updates on ‘Paper Girls S2’, in case it really happens in the future (or the present).