HBO’s 1970s Porn Drama ‘The Deuce’ To End After One More Season

The critically lauded HBO 1970s-era porn drama The Deuce launched its second season less than two weeks ago, but the pay cable network on Thursday announced that the show will come back for a third season, according to Entertainment Weekly. The catch, however, is that the third season of The Deuce will also be the final season. The show has received wide critical acclaim, with The Hollywood Reporter describing it as “increasingly immersive, densely layered and intriguing all around,” and The Washington Post deeming the show “serious and provocative.” The review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes reports that 96 percent of all critics and 94 percent of “top critics” have rated the HBO drama favorably. But the gritty, period piece has struggled to find an audience. As EW reported, the first two episodes of the second season drew only 600,000 viewers in overnight ratings. The show was co-created by David Simon, best known for creating the now-classic HBO crime drama The Wire, and crime novelist George Pelecanos. On Thursday, Simon posted a note of graittude to HBO on his Twitter account, saying that the network’s renewal of The Deuce for one more season, will allow the show to complete its story. “We're always conjuring the last scene before we write the first. So much the better when we work for people who allow us to consistently plan, arc and execute as intended,” Simon wrote. “Thanks, @HBO, for the third and final season renewal and the chance for #thedeuce to tell its full story.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, Simon and Pelecanos had planned the show for only three seasons, with each taking place in a different time period as the storyline followed its characters through the beginnings, rise and ultimately, decline of New York City’s porn and sex work industry. While the first season opened in the early 1970s, just as a Supreme Court decision loosened laws against “obscenity,” opening the door for the porn industry to operate legally, out in the open. The second and current season is set in 1977—a pivotal year in New York City history as the city faced bankruptcy, a stifling summer heat wave, a massive power blackout that erupted into widespread looting, and the terror wreaked by a serial killer known as “Son of Sam.” The third season will reportedly take place in the teh New York of the early 1980s and, according to HBO publicity material, “the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market all ended the bawdy turbulence.” Image via HBO.com