Final season for 'Desperate Housewives'
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The "for sale" sign just went up on Wisteria Lane. ABC announced Sunday that the eighth season of "Desperate Housewives" would be its last.
Speaking to TV writers in Beverly Hills at the outset of ABC's portion of the critic's tour, ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee said, "I just wanted to make sure that this show that sort of put this network on the map [and was] certainly the new brand of this network for the last six or seven years, had its victory lap."
Still a top 10 show and a time-period winner on Sunday nights, "Housewives" -- like all long-running hits -- has aged and become pricier to produce.
Marc Cherry, the show's creator who has long said he wanted to wrap after the seventh season, told critics Sunday that ending the series "is something that's weighed on my mind for quite a while now because I have been working in television for 23 years [and] I'm also very aware [that like] people overstaying their welcome, shows that kind of go on too long . . . drift away into nothing, and they're unceremoniously booted off. And I just didn't want that to happen to 'Desperate Housewives.' I wanted to go out while the network still saw us as a viable show, while we were still doing well in the ratings, and we were still a force to be contended with."
He said discussions on ending began exactly a year ago, when Lee first stepped into the job. There was a question about ending with the eighth or ninth season but ultimately settled on the eighth as the last.
Cherry said he reached out to the cast on Friday: Their reaction was "bittersweet [and] a touch of shock," but the performers were "grateful" for the run: "That was the primary color of the conversations."
Developing a new ABC series called "Hallelujah," about a town in Tennessee, Cherry ruled out a "DH" spinoff or sequel.
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