Showtime's papal drama "The Borgias" will end its run at the end of its current third season, the network said Wednesday.
The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale — and, now, its series finale — on June 16 at 10 p.m.
Also read:'Borgias' Aims for 4 Seasons
The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale — and, now, its series finale — on June 16 at 10 p.m.
Series creator Neil Jordan said that the series is ending for "a variety of reasons" but that the final episode, dubbed "The Prince," seemed "like the end of a journey" for the Borgia family.
"I never thought I would make a cable series and have enjoyed every minute of it," Jordan noted. "For a variety of reasons we won’t be doing a fourth season, but, ‘The Prince’ [the final episode], when I wrote it and shot it, did seem like the end of a journey for the family. Whatever bonded them as a family dies in this episode, and the center of the drama for me was always the family. I want to thank Showtime and David Nevins for their unstinting support over the last three years, and look forward to working with them in the future."
Despite the cancelation, Showtime Networks president of entertainment David Nevins called "The Borgias" an example of "outstanding television that will live on."
"It has been an honor to work with the great Neil Jordan and the incomparable Jeremy Irons on 'The Borgias,'" Nevins said. "Neil has written nearly every episode of this series himself. His extraordinary storytelling combined with Jeremy's fascinating portrayal of the infamous Pope Alexander VI, has made for truly outstanding television that will live on. I look forward to future collaborations."
So far in his current season, "The Borgias" has averaged 2.4 million total viewers across platforms, basically what it averaged for its second season in the same time frame.
Early last year, as the show prepared to launch its second season, "Borgias" executive producer James Flynn said that the series would ideally run for four seasons.
"The overall plan in a series like this is ideally four seasons," he said Thursday. "That would be the plan, that would be the ambition."
More to come…