Deli Boys, the Onyx Collective crime dramedy starring Asif Ali, Saagar Shaikh and Poorna Jagannathan, has been canceled at Hulu after two seasons. The show, which averaged a 98 percent critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes across both seasons, was ultimately brought down by low viewership and ratings that never broke into Nielsen’s top 10 streaming rankings.
The cancellation marks the end of a series that was genuinely rare in Hollywood. Created by Abdullah Saeed, a Pakistani American writer, with all three lead actors of South Asian descent, Deli Boys offered a level of South Asian representation in front of and behind the camera that has few if any precedents in American television.
The show followed Mir and Raj Dar, played by Ali and Shaikh, a pair of pampered Pakistani American brothers who lose everything after their convenience store-magnate father is killed, only to discover he had a secret life of crime. Forced to take up his mantle in the underworld, the brothers navigate their unlikely new lives as criminal kingpins under the watchful eye of Lucky Aunty, played by Jagannathan, their father’s confidant and a crime boss in her own right.
Onyx had made the show a priority heading into Season 2, adding Fred Armisen as a series regular and bringing in a supporting cast that included Andrew Rannells, Kumail Nanjiani, Lilly Singh, Robin Thede and Tan France in hopes of attracting new viewers. The strategy did not produce the ratings growth the platform needed.
The series ends on an unresolved cliffhanger. The Season 2 finale revealed that the “eldest Dar” was coming to claim a piece of Baba’s fortune, a mystery that will now go unanswered. The cast had hinted the storyline could have taken the show to Pakistan or introduced an entirely new branch of the Dar family, with Jagannathan suggesting Lucky Aunty knows exactly who is coming even if the brothers do not.
“It could be an older brother. It could be an older sister. They could be in America. They could be in Pakistan. We just don’t know,” Shaikh said.
Deli Boys was created by Abdullah Saeed and developed by Jenni Konner and Nora Silver under Jenni Konner Productions. Michelle Nader served as showrunner and executive producer alongside Saeed, Konner and Silver. The series was produced by 20th Television for Onyx Collective. Both seasons are currently streaming on Hulu.