NBC canceled two of its scripted series on Friday May 1, 2026, medical drama Brilliant Minds after two seasons and freshman cheerleading mockumentary comedy Stumble after one.
The cancellations are the network’s first official decisions for the 2026-27 season and leave three shows still waiting to hear their fate before NBC’s upfront presentation on May 11.
The Brilliant Minds cancellation was the less surprising of the two. The show became NBC’s lowest-rated drama on linear television this season despite holding the same post-Voice Monday timeslot it occupied in Season 1.
Despite one of the most coveted lead-in positions on broadcast television, the Zachary Quinto-fronted medical series posted double-digit year-over-year viewership declines that grew steep enough that NBC pulled it from the schedule in February 2026 to make room for two-hour Voice episodes.
The network had seen enough.
Six episodes of Brilliant Minds’ second season remain unaired. They will begin rolling out on NBC starting May 27, a farewell run for a show that earned genuine critical appreciation it could never convert into the linear viewership numbers the network required.
What Was Brilliant Minds And Why Did It Get Canceled?
Brilliant Minds premiered in September 2024 as part of NBC’s fall lineup, a medical drama with a specific and genuinely unusual creative foundation.
The series was based on books by renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, specifically “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropologist on Mars,” two works of clinical storytelling that turned complex neurological cases into deeply human portraits of patients whose conditions redefined their relationships with reality, memory and identity.
Zachary Quinto played Dr. Oliver Wolf, a neurology physician at Bronx General Hospital whose team takes on medical mysteries of the mind.
The official logline asked the question that shaped every episode: who deserves care?
The show was created by Michael Grassi and executive produced alongside Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish among others.
The full cast alongside Quinto included Tamberla Perry, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alex MacNicoll, Aury Krebs, Spence Moore II, Teddy Sears, Donna Murphy and John Clarence Stewart.
The critical response was strong. Brilliant Minds holds an 88 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and an 81 percent audience score, numbers that reflect a show whose quality was recognized and whose fanbase was real.
What those numbers could not do was translate into the linear viewership that broadcast network economics require.
Season 1 ran from September 2024 through January 2025. Season 2 premiered in September 2025 and aired 14 episodes before NBC pulled it from the schedule in February 2026.
In the weeks it aired this season, it averaged just above 3 million viewers on a seven-day linear basis, the smallest total of any drama on NBC’s current schedule.
The year-over-year decline from Season 1 to Season 2, in the same timeslot, is the kind of number that makes renewal discussions very short.
The early warning sign arrived when NBC replaced Brilliant Minds with expanded Voice episodes on Monday nights.
Networks do not pull shows from premium post-Voice real estate for scheduling flexibility reasons alone. They do it because the show has stopped justifying the timeslot.
What Was Stumble?
Stumble is the cancellation that fans of quality television will find more surprising.
The show premiered in November 2025 as a mockumentary comedy set in the world of junior college cheerleading, specific, underrepresented on television and, as it turned out, a genuinely productive comedic setting.
Jenn Lyon played the lead, a celebrated cheerleading coach who was fired after being caught drinking with her team and wound up at a small junior college in Oklahoma chasing a national championship.
The show ran 13 episodes through its series finale in March 2026.
Stumble holds an 82 percent critical approval rating and a 96 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, that 96 percent audience figure reflecting the intensity of affection from the viewers who did find it.
The problem was that not enough viewers found it. It averaged 2.24 million viewers on a seven-day linear basis, the lowest viewership of any scripted series on NBC this season.
It aired on Fridays behind Reba McEntire’s Happy’s Place, which is a difficult position for any new series trying to build an audience.
Universal Television gave the show multiple scheduling opportunities to find its audience. It never gathered the momentum the network needed.
The Three Shows Still On The Bubble
The cancellations of Brilliant Minds and Stumble leave three scripted shows awaiting their fates before the May 11 upfront.
Law and Order is in the most complicated position. The mothership franchise returned in 2022 after being off the air since 2010 and has found its creative stride in recent seasons after navigating significant cast changes.
The current season has been described as among the stronger since the relaunch.
The challenge is that its linear viewership, while decent, lags behind One Chicago and SVU on the same network.
Cancelling Law and Order unceremoniously for a second time is, per Deadline, “hard to imagine,” but the renewal is not automatic.
SVU was renewed. Organized Crime was recently canceled. The Law and Order mothership sits in uncertain territory.
The Hunting Party is in a better position. The sophomore drama starring Melissa Roxburgh was considered the stronger of NBC’s two sophomore dramas heading into cancellation season.
Season 1 performed well on Netflix in the US, generating what sources describe as a halo effect on Peacock where Season 2 streams next day.
Linear ratings have not meaningfully improved, but the Peacock streaming performance gives NBC a cross-platform reason to see the show as a network asset beyond its live numbers.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, the midseason comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan, is described as “looking good for renewal, likely with another shorter order.” Its position is considerably more secure than the other two bubble shows heading into the upfront.
What NBC Is Building For Next Season
NBC ordered eight pilots for 2026-27 consideration, a higher number than has been typical in recent seasons.
The two most prominently discussed are a reboot of The Rockford Files starring David Boreanaz and a PI comedy from Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici, co-creator of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Both are described by industry sources as strong contenders for series orders. The network is also evaluating a range of procedural and comedy pilots.
The upfront presentation on May 11 is when NBC reveals its 2026-27 fall schedule to advertisers, the moment when the full renewal and cancellation picture becomes clear and the new pilots get their answers.
For Brilliant Minds, the May 27 premiere of its remaining six episodes is the final chapter.
The fan response to Friday’s cancellation announcement was consistent with what tends to happen when a critically praised show with a loyal audience gets the axe, a mixture of genuine grief and frustration that the numbers never reflected the quality.
The six remaining episodes will have to serve as the ending the show was not supposed to need yet.
