By Rebecca Lewis

Copyright hellomagazine

Hulu has canceled the half-hour sitcom Mid-Century Modern after just one season. Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham led the cast of the comedy which followed “three best friends — gay gentlemen of a certain age – who, after an unexpected death, decide to spend their golden years living together in Palm Springs where the wealthiest one lives with his mother”. The series told the story of their lives “as a chosen family”.

Series co-creator Max Mutchnick shared the news on Instagram, writing: “Ten great episodes… Not enough. But we loved making every single one of them. We’re gonna miss our very special show. Thanks to everyone who watched.” It debuted in March 2025. Linda Lavin also appeared in the series, although she passed away in December 2024, four months before the series premiered on Hulu.

The surprising thing is that the series had an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, with The Observer writing” A multi-cam sitcom shot in front of a live audience with every episode clocking in at under 30 minutes, Mid-Century Modern is eager to scratch that nostalgic itch in your brain. Luckily, though, it’s not all stuck in the past.”

“Though the show does lean into several stereotypes of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s all done in good humor and with a bit of flair,” shared Variety, as The Hollywood Reporter suggested that “Mid-Century Modern may be the best show of 1987 that couldn’t have possibly been made in 1987,” and that it “back-fills a cultural void in a way that represents moving forward and backward at once, albeit probably more the latter”.

Linda starred as Sybil, Bunny’s mother, a veteran stage and TV actress known for her Emmy-nominated role in the 1976 sitcom Alice and Tony-winning performance in the 1986 play Broadway Bound. She died on December 29 2025 at the age of 87 unexpectedly due to complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her PR representative confirmed.

However, her cancer diagnosis led to her to ask Max and the other showrunners to write a death for Sybil into the series, and she appeared in eight of the 10 episodes. “She was very clear with us about making sure that we wrote everything that was going on with her into the show,” Max told Entertainment Weekly.

“It gave us a freedom that we never thought we were going to have to use in the way that we wrote that final episode,” he added, with co-creator David Kohan sharing that “it gave us a directive,” and that the actress’s wishes were, “‘what happens to me should happen to the character’.”

In episode nine, titled “Here’s to you, Mrs. Schneiderman,” a heartbroken Bunny tells his friends Jerry and Arthur that his mom died in the car while he was driving her to the hospital – after she told him to drive carefully and “don’t get a ticket”.

Bunny tells his friends that he rolled down the window to get her air, as she was having trouble breathing, but that after she told him, “if I die, I love you,” he realized she had grown quiet and passed away