Historical British drama "Becoming Elizabeth" canceled after only one season due to poor ratings

Streaming platform Starz has canceled its freshman historical series Being Elizabeth, according to DEADLINE.

Created by Anya Reiss, the series follows the early life of Queen Elizabeth I (Alicia von Rittberg), an orphan teenage girl drawn into the politics of the English court as she seeks the throne. With no clear heir, the death of King Henry VIII sets off a dangerous struggle for power. His surviving children find themselves pawns between England's great families and the European powers vying for control of the country. Also starring are Romola Garai, Jessica Raine, Tom Cullen and Bella Ramsey.

According to statistics, Being Elizabeth failed to attract viewers: the premiere on August 12 was the most watched episode of the series, but only had 158,000 viewers. The series continued to lose viewers in the following weeks, averaging 136,000 viewers for the season.

Most of these viewers are not the 18-49 age group that the platform's ads are intended to target. The ad rating for the entire season of Being Elizabeth is only 0.01, and only the two episodes including the first episode have an ad rating of 0.02.