'Dangerous Liaisons' Ends as Starz Revokes Its Season 2 Renewal

It's been a rough few weeks for television fans — particularly for those of us who love period dramas and genre properties. Shows are being canceled outright, options to continue are not being picked up, and even shows that were ostensibly seen as "safe" aren't necessarily so much anymore. Over at Warner Brothers, a promised additional half-season of the HBO supernatural Victorian drama The Nevers wasn't enough to save it, and multiple other prestige series are quietly being shuttered despite pre-existing renewal announcements.

Sadly, such is the fate that has apparently befallen the Starz drama Dangerous Liaisons. Despite the fact that the drama was greenlit for a Season 2 before its first episode ever even aired, the cable network has decided not to move forward with another run.

The drama was a prequel (or "prelude" depending on who you ask) to to the events depicted in the classic nineteenth-century French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos and the 1998 Academy Award-winning feature film starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Here Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton star as the future Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont when they are still just Camille and Pascal, a pair of young lovers struggling to survive in the gritty underbelly of Paris and longing for more influential positions in society. Betrayals, scams, and a whole lot of drama ensue.