Glow: Netflix cancels wrestling drama over coronavirus despite final season beginning shooting

Alison Brie comedy was last summer renewed for its fourth and final season

'Glow' has been cancelled by Netflix (Erica Parise/Netflix)

Netflix has cancelled TV series Glow due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Emmy-nominated comedy, which centres around a troupe of female wrestlers, was last summer renewed for a fourth and final season. The final season had been shooting for three weeks and had wrapped on one episode when it was suspended in March due to the pandemic.

On Monday (5 October), Netflix announced that the show had been cancelled, claiming that shooting an ensemble show that was so “physically intimate” would be challenging under social distancing measures.

Series creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch told Deadline: “Covid has killed actual humans. It’s a national tragedy and should be our focus. Covid also apparently took down our show.

“We were handed the creative freedom to make a complicated comedy about women and tell their stories. And wrestle. And now that’s gone. There’s a lot of s***ty things happening in the world that are much bigger than this right now. But it still sucks that we don’t get to see these 15 women in a frame together again.”

Shooting on the final season had already begun (Ali Goldstein/Netflix)

Set in Los Angeles during the 1980s, Glow – short for the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling – stars Alison Brie, Marc Maron, Betty Gilpin and Kate Nash.

Brie responded to the news by sharing pictures of her cast mates to Instagram, writing: “Going to miss this... Forever grateful to my Glow family for changing my life forever.”