Why Paramount+ Canceled Happy Face

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Far from a mark of shame, being canceled after one season puts your show among some surprisingly stellar company. Great sci-fi series have ended after just one season and some of the best TV shows you'll ever see had similarly short runs. In the streaming age such a thing has become even more common, with even shows that seem to perform well being canned prematurely. Just look at Netflix canceling "The Residence," which initially looked as though it could be one of the streamer's newest hits when it topped the Netflix charts back in March 2025. Paramount+ crime drama "Happy Face" however, was sort of somewhere in the middle.

"Happy Face" came from the creators of "Evil" and "The Good Fight," husband and wife duo Robert and Michelle King. The eight-episode scripted series was actually adapted from the true crime podcast "Happy Face" by Melissa Moore, which in turn was inspired by Moore's 2009 autobiography "Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter." In the book, Moore recounted her real-life experience of being the daughter of the notorious "Happy Face" serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson.

Annaleigh Ashford starred as Melissa Reed, Jesperson's daughter and a makeup artist on fictional daytime talk show "The Dr. Greg Show." Dennis Quaid played the titular killer and ​​James Wolk portrayed Ben Reed, Melissa's husband. Jennifer Cacicio, who also wrote on Showtime series "Your Honor," served as showrunner and executive producer. Alongside the Kings, she brought the show to fruition on Paramount+, with the premiere episode airing on March 20, 2025. Just four months later, though, "Happy Face" was canceled.

If you're wondering why streaming services keep canceling shows early, much of it has to do with the way streaming works as opposed to traditional TV. Whereas ratings very much drive linear TV, streaming platforms are all about subscriber numbers and keeping existing users signed up. The companies also have an easier time canceling shows as they don't have rigid schedules to adhere to, unlike traditional TV networks which need to constantly fill time slots. As such, it's not such a big deal for streamers to pull the plug on series if they're not performing well right out of the gate.

In the case of "Happy Face," it seems the show didn't perform well initially, then continued to play to a general lack of interest, pretty much securing its cancellation from the off. The season 1 finale aired May 1, 2025, and while it certainly wrapped up the story well enough, it also made sure to leave things open for a second season. But with no word from Paramount+ on whether the series would return, things weren't looking good.

Almost two months later, in late July, Deadline reported that the streamer had chosen not to renew the series. While there was no official explanation (as is so often the case) Deadline did note that "Happy Face" had failed to cause much of a stir during its run, never once breaking into the Nielsen Streaming Originals Top 10 and generally seeming to fly under everyone's radar. The show was also somewhat of a gamble in the sense that it wasn't part of an existing TV franchise, which in the age of regurgitation is always going to be a risk in the eyes of commissioners. Paramount also seems to be having major success with Taylor Sheridan's ever-expanding universe of shows, against which "Happy Face" must have looked like a bit of a disappointment.

"Happy Face" wasn't necessarily canceled due to the critical response, but its lackluster reviews certainly didn't help. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the show was hardly a critical hit, earning a meager 57% critic score. That might have been okay for a series that otherwise had some buzz among audiences and on social media, but by all accounts, "Happy Face" didn't deliver on that front either. 

That said, it's not as if the show was an out=and-out disaster. Several critics liked the crime drama, with RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico praising the way in which "the writing maintains momentum through eight hours of television in a way that a lot of bloated modern shows fail to do." Kristy Puchko of Mashable proclaimed that true crime fans' "next TV obsession has arrived" while Ed Power of The Independent noted the "challenge posed by bringing podcasts to TV," ultimately complimenting "Happy Face" for being "stonkingly average (rather than weird and boring)." These voices were, unsurprisingly, not enough to save the show.