Lincoln Rhyme canceled: Did it work well as a limited series?

Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector should have been a limited series

NBC has canceled Lincoln Rhyme after one season. However, watching the season play out, it could have worked well if it was always intended to be a limited series.

Despite a good start for a Friday night TV crime drama, the show couldn’t keep its audience. It ticked down to 0.47 in the demo and 3.7 million views on average, according to TVLine. However, there was still a little hope, as it was just below The Blacklist and ahead of the renewed Good Girls.

However, it looks like NBC thinks the pilots are a better risk to take for the 2020-2021 season. And with the title of Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, it almost feels like NBC was ready for ending with just one season.

Should Lincoln Rhyme have been written as a limited series?

Had it not been for the final seconds of the Season 1 finale, which is now the series finale, the show could have worked well as a limited series. It had a clear beginning, middle, and end. After all, it all ended with the capture of the Bone Collector, the villain that the title had hinted would be the big case.

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There was never a reason for filler cases throughout, although some were involved. The filler cases that did happen were copycat killers or something that would link back to the Bone Collector in some way—drawing Lincoln and Amelia closer together and deeper into the case.

The focus was on the adversary in the title. We knew it had to end with Lincoln and Amelia taking down the Bone Collector in the end.

Only one thing stopped this from being a good limited series. It was the very end with the introduction of a new case. Arguably, this could have been left for the second season premiere if there was going to be one. We could have seen Lincoln, Amelia, and others happy that they’d finally solved this one case, but they knew that they would continue working together as a team. After all, lives don’t come to an end just because a limited series comes to an end.

Instead, the show finished with something that should have pushed it into a second season. It took a risk that it felt it had to. But ever since the title of the show changed from just Lincoln to Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, part of me always felt like it was going to be a one-and-done series.

I’m disappointed in the loss of jobs. I always am when it comes to the end of a show. However, there’s a beauty in well-written limited series. Streaming services have benefited from them. British TV is full of them. Now it’s time for U.S. broadcast TV to accept them.

What did you think of Lincoln Rhyme’s first season? Would it have worked as a limited series? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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