Showtime’s ‘The Circus’ to End After 8 Seasons

“The Circus” is set to end its eight-season run on Showtime.

The political docuseries, which is hosted by correspondents John Heilemann, Mark McKinnon and Jennifer Palmieri, will come to a close after its current season wraps up. Its final episode will premiere Sunday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime, and will stream on Paramount+ for viewers with the Paramount+ Showtime plan.

First launched amid the 2016 presidential election, “The Circus” ran for 130 episodes as it broke down the ins and outs of each week’s chaotic political news, including Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the 2020 election and the subsequent Jan. 6 insurrection that followed, the COVID-19 pandemic and the international tensions occurring during Joe Biden’s presidency.

“When we started ‘The Circus’ in 2016, we thought it would be a one-and-done deal,” host and EP Heilemann told Politico, which first reported the news of the show’s end. “Eight seasons and 130 episodes later, we’re still agog that Showtime gave us the trust and support that kept us cranking on this long, strange trip — and let us prove that our idea of doing a weekly, behind-the-scenes, real-time doc series on American politics wasn’t as unhinged as it seemed. Our belief in the importance of the story we’ve been covering and our eagerness to keep covering it, ‘Circus’-style, hasn’t changed.”

The docuseries wraps up ahead of the height of the 2024 presidential campaign, whose lead-up has been chronicled by “The Circus,” which covered the first match-up between Biden and Trump in 2020.

In 2017, following the departure of EP and host Mark Halperin amid allegations of sexual harassment by multiple women, “The Circus” welcomed then-contributor Alex Wagner as a full-time host. As Wagner took over most of Rachel Maddow’s primetime MSNBC timeslot earlier this year, she left “The Circus” as a host.

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