Steph Curry’s Big Acting Splash Didn’t Get Enough Playing Time

Steph Curry isn’t used to missing — though he was never much one for twos.

Peacock has canceled mockumentary Mr. Throwback, NBA superstar Curry’s acting debut (OK, so he played himself on HBO’s Ballers once) and the first scripted, live-action series produced by his Unanimous Media banner, after just one season. The cancellation is due to a lack of viewership, The Hollywood Reporter is told, not quality.

Mr. Throwback debuted to a pretty strong reception (although THR‘s review contended it “Never quite lives up to Curry’s charm or pedigree.”). The six-episode season one has an 86 percent rating among TV critics on Rotten Tomatoes and is at 80 percent with the audience. (Among “Top Critics,” it’s at 67 percent, lower but still “Fresh,” though that only accounts for six reviews — a relatively small sample size.)

The series was not without its flaws, but it was funny (enough) and charming (enough) to last for more than 180 total TV minutes — or less than four NBA games (in basketball minutes). Sure, Curry was not about to transition from winning NBA Championships (he has four) and MVPs (two) to Emmys and Oscars, but he was fine. It helped that he was born to play the role: Curry played himself, albeit a likely simpler (or at least more naive) version.

Doing the heavy lifting from an acting and comedy standpoint was everybody’s buddy Adam Pally (Knuckles, Iron Man 3, the Sonic the Hedgehog movies) as Danny Grossman, the titular Mr. Throwback, with assists from Ego Nwodim (SNL) and Ayden Mayeri (I Love That for You). Pally played a down-on-his-luck sports-memorabilia dealer seeking redemption (well, at first he was merely seeking game-used Curry duds to get out of a debt) by reuniting with his sixth-grade basketball teammate, Curry. The two made for a likable if unlikely pair of friends. Danny achieved some redemption, but it’s hard to fully break good by episode 106.

It was a solid family comedy by a solid comedy family. Mr. Throwback marked the latest reunion for Pally, writer/executive producer David Caspe and writers/EPs/brothers Matthew Libman and Daniel Libman, who all worked together on Happy Endings and Champaign ILL. David Wain directed. It was a well-orchestrated way for Curry to transition from his playing career, which is winding down, to some sort of a career in TV and film. Think of Curry and Unanimous Media are LeBron James and Springhill-light.

The plan got off to a good start. Mr. Throwback debuted on the NBCUniversal streaming platform as “a top 5 Peacock original comedy through their respective opening weekends,” reps proudly told the media in August 2024. That sounded fine although that’s probably a few too many qualifying words to be a great thing. Nielsen concurred. Mr. Throwback never made the ratings company’s streaming top 10. (Peacock’s Based on a True Story, also now a one-and-done series after a Tuesday-night cancellation, charted once on Nielsen’s originals list — in eighth place for its premiere week.)

Whether or not Mr. Throwback got off to a good (enough) start, it undoubtedly had a terrific launch opportunity. The comedy series debuted on Peacock on Thursday, August 8, 2024; two days later, Curry led the men’s USA Basketball team to a gold medal on the same platform. Pally was courtside for the game and subsequent medal ceremony when cameras caught Curry tossing up a Mr. Throwback reference — chubby cheeks — from the podium. NBCUniversal executives lost their minds over the moment of true corporate synergy. It provided a morsel of redemption from the stalled 2020 launch of Peacock, which was intended to roll out with that summer’s Olympics. COVID had different plans, and there is an argument to be made that Peacock has still not recovered — and maybe it never will.

In the same set of bullet points provided to press, NBCU pointed out that 77 percent of the Peacock accounts that watched Mr. Throwback over its opening weekend “also watched basketball at the Olympics.” To a degree, that is mission accomplished, though it would have been far better for the show had 77 percent of the accounts that watched basketball at the Olympics also watched Mr. Throwback. There’s a large disparity in audience size between the two.

Still, it was at least a fine start for Mr. Throwback — but that’s where it ended. The following month, Mr. Throwback was thrown on NBC in an attempt to drum up some viewership the old-fashioned way, but it didn’t. It’s too bad too, because Mr. Throwback is in some ways a true throwback to network sitcoms, and no one has historically done those better than NBC.

So the buzzer has buzzed on Mr. Throwback, and no half-court heave (of which Curry can seemingly make as easy as a layup) is here to save it. Except for the fact that there definitely is an opportunity for one last shot. In a giant media-rights shake-up, the NBA is returning to NBC later this year — a second big crossover opportunity, timed perfectly, to re-launched Mr. Throwback with season two this fall. Corporate synergy doesn’t get much better than that, and it fell right into the laps of NBCU shot-callers. Unless … they definitely knew there was never going to be a 2025 Summer Olympics, right?