Published May 6, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT
Zach Moser is a Philadelphia native who writes about film and television news. Zach has been published in Points In Case, Business Insider, Slackjaw, ROCA Travel, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
NBC's science fiction drama series, La Brea, was cancelled after three series, but it's finding new life on Netflix. La Brea was created and produced for NBC in 2021 by showrunner David Appelbaum and ran for 24 episodes before it was announced that the then-upcoming six-episode season 3 would be its last.
La Brea season 1 has a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, and though the next two seasons don't have scores, they didn't do much to elevate viewers' and critics' opinions of the show. Yet, La Brea is ranked high on the Netflix streaming chart, where you can now watch the entire series as of May 1, 2026.
La Brea isn't the first network TV show to get a second chance at an audience after a streamer picks it up for its back catalog, but it might be one of the worst-reviewed shows that has suddenly become a hit. There are parts of La Brea that are stunningly laughable, but it doesn't commit the cardinal sin of bad TV because La Brea is not boring.
It's absurd, the science, particularly when time travel paradoxes start to emerge, makes no sense, and the writing won't be making you pause and think. Intentionally or not, La Brea is something of a madcap show, and it's never afraid to put its characters in the most exciting situations with amazing creatures, even if it's unclear how we got into those situations.
The visual effects in La Brea are actually quite impressive for a network TV show, and while it's nothing like something the MCU or Star Wars has put out, it doesn't take you out of the show. Dinosaurs and prehistoric animals always seem to be quietly popular on TV, and La Brea is filling that niche.
NBC Ended La Brea With A Shortened Season 3
What's strange about La Brea compared to other network shows that have been reinvigorated after arriving on streaming is that there's been very little time between the end of La Brea in February 2024 and its appearance on Netflix in May 2026. If the show is so popular, it calls into question why NBC would cancel the series.
La Brea was canceled in November 2023, when NBC announced that the upcoming third season would be the final one. NBC never said why it canceled the show, but declining viewership and consistently bad reviews certainly didn't help. NBC seems like it wanted to be rid of the show as quickly and cheaply as possible, hence the shortened season 3.
|
Season |
Episodes |
Air Dates |
|
1 |
10 |
Sep 2021 - Nov 2021 |
|
2 |
14 |
Sep 2022 - Feb 2023 |
|
3 |
6 |
Jan 2024 - Feb 2024 |
Season 1 had 10 episodes, while season 2 was bumped to 14, but there are only six episodes in season 3. While this was bad news for the cast and crew, and the fans at the time, it probably helped garner interest in the show on streaming. As rushed as the ending of La Brea is, it's still an ending, something a lot of Netflix shows can't claim to have.
Netflix is notorious for canceling TV shows early in their runs and leaving the series on unsatisfying cliffhangers. That's not a problem with La Brea. The entire show is available and quick to binge at only 30 minutes per episode. Sometimes people just want to sit and watch a show with dinosaurs and be sure there's an ending to it all.
Release Date 2021 - 2024-00-00
Directors Adam Davidson, Cherie Nowlan, Thor Freudenthal, David Barrett, Ron Underwood, Greg McLean, Nick Gomez, Rose Troche, Christine Moore, Tara Miele
Writers David Appelbaum, Rob Wright, Christopher Hollier, Jerome Schwartz, Onalee Hunter, Jessica Granger, Jose Molina, Russel Friend, Bisanne Masoud, Zakiyyah Alexander, Erica Meredith
English (US) ·