It's time to say goodbye to the Miramar Playa.
Magic City, the Starz television drama created by native Miamian Mitch Glazer, will end after its second season, the network announced yesterday. This Friday's season finale will mark its final episode.
See also:
- Miami-Made Magic City Glams Up Miami Film Festival (Video)
- Six Reasons Why Magic City Will Be Your New Favorite Show
The series launched just over a year ago, in the spring of 2012, with plenty of buzz stemming from stars like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Danny Houston. Billed as a hybrid of Mad Men and The Sopranos, Magic City focused on the seedy underworld beneath the operations of a flashy hotel on Miami Beach in a time of turbulent politics in South Florida.
Glazer grew up in Miami, hanging out in the same hotels where his father worked. The stories he collected there helped to inform the plot and style of Magic City. "The stories of this place stayed with me," he told New Times. "I've kept these stories [since childhood], and I've used a lot of them already."
Glazer and his team set up a filming headquarters in a former boat-building warehouse near Miami International Airport, including a lifelike replica of the Fontainebleau hotel lobby as it looked in the late 1950s. Smaller sets were constructed in other parts of the warehouse, and the series filmed on location in Miami often as well. If you saw yellow signs instructing "MC crew" on where to park around town, you knew there was a film location nearby.
Before the first season had premiered, Starz announced it had ordered a second season of the show, which many took as a sign of faith in a long-lasting tv series. It seemed to have all the essential parts of a successful premium cable drama: sex, violence, gangsters, opulent lifestyles, retro style. But Magic City failed to connect with viewers, even here in Miami. Beyond the first couple episodes, buzz around the story of Ike Evans and his struggle to keep his hotel afloat faded.
But for its few fans, Starz promised in a statement, "The season's story arc will allow us to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the series."
The series finale airs this Friday at 9 p.m.
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