'Playboy Club' canceled after three episodes (BLOG)

The real Chicago outpost of Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club lasted more than 25 years before closing but the fictionalized TV version didn't make it four weeks.

NBC's "The Playboy Club," developed by showrunner and Highland Park native Chad Hodge, appears to be the first casualty of the fall TV season. On Tuesday the network pulled the one-hour drama off its schedule after a third consecutive week of disappointing ratings.

The show debuted with 5 million viewers and continued a downward slide. Several advertisers had pulled out by the second episode. On Monday, the show brought in 3.4 million viewers for what turned out to be its final broadcast.

Set in 1961 at the eponymous Chicago nightclub, the series had been filming entirely in Chicago since mid-August, primarily from the new Cinespace soundstage complex on the Southwest Side, where producers built an elaborate set re-creating the club's interior.

While the majority of the cast was from Los Angeles -- including leads Amber Heard and Eddie Cibrian -- local actors did see some work from the show, including Carrie Coon (currently starring in "The Real Thing" at Writers' Theatre in Glencoe) as a newspaper reporter going undercover as a Bunny. Coon's episode was the last to air.

The impact will be far more significant on the production side. According to Mark Hogan, who heads the local union that represents a number of crew categories including hair and makeup, lighting and set designers, "99.5 percent of the people working on the show were Chicago workers."

This is the second Chicago-based series to get the ax in 2011. In May, Fox declined to pick up Shawn Ryan's police procedural "The Chicago Code" for a second season.

"We love to have television series shooting in Illinois because it has the potential for very steady work and a very steady stream of money coming into the state," said Betsy Steinberg, managing director of the Illinois Film Office. "The potential for a television show to really make an economic impact is huge, which is why we court TV so heavily."

Prior to the cancellation, "The Playboy Club" was in the middle of filming Episode 6. Including the pilot, "that's like seven indie film shoots," said Steinberg, referring to the number of people employed and money spent, with a budget per episode likely in the $2 million range. According to Steinberg, 200 to 300 union and non-union Illinois residents worked on the show.

On the upside, the new Chicago-shot Kelsey Grammer series "Boss" (which debuts Oct 21 on Starz) has been renewed before the first episode airs. The 10-episode second season, featuring Grammer as a tough-talking Chicago mayor, is expected to start filming early next year (also at Cinespace).

Showtime's "Shameless," which shoots exteriors in Chicago, was in town for a week in August and is expected back this fall. No word yet on the FX pilot for "Powers," which shot in town this summer, or the MTV single-camera comedy "Underemployed," the new series from playwright Craig Wright about a group of 20-somethings in Chicago.

"The more of these shows that are shot in Chicago, the more it solidifies our reputation as a great place to do business," said Steinberg.

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