This Is (Not) Us: How Rise and The Village Went from Promising New Series to Practically Lost Media

The Ratings Junkie

You probably remember This Is Us, NBC’s breakout dramedy that lasted six seasons from 2016 through 2022. What you may not remember is NBC’s attempt to bring viewers This Is Us-like series. They tried twice: first with a musical teen drama in 2018’s Rise, and second with a more blatant derivative in 2019’s The Village. Despite being hyped up by the network, the two shows aired just 10 episodes each, none of which are available to stream today. Here is a look back at Rise and The Village, and what went wrong in NBC’s attempt to This Is Us-ify their schedule.

The Original Hit Machine

This Is Us (2016-2022)

From the very beginning, This Is Us was expected to do well. The series immediately broke a record of having the most-viewed trailer for a new fall series, and was the subject of much online chatter. It was also given a solid time slot, airing directly after The Voice on Tuesdays, first at 10 pm and later at 9 pm. The Voice had just given new exposure to Chicago Fire and helped NBC launch Chicago Med, giving one enough reason to believe it could also provide exposure for This Is Us. It did that for the first two weeks, where This Is Us achieved approximately 80% retention at 10 pm. Once NBC shifted The Voice to 8 pm and This Is Us to 9 pm, the latter grew from its lead-in every week until midway through its fourth season. Given This Is Us’s monstrous success, it’s no wonder NBC wanted to replicate it.

The First Attempt

Rise (2018)

Ordered for the 2017-18 TV season, Rise was a teen musical drama based off the book Drama High. The series was created by Jason Katims, who was previously the showrunner of the cult teen sports drama Friday Night Lights and the fairly successful family drama Parenthood. In ordinary circumstances, these are not necessarily signals that Rise would become a highly-viewed series. A critically acclaimed show and cult classic, possibly, but high viewership and demo ratings would be pretty much out of the question. However, Rise was billed as a mixture of Friday Night Lights, Glee, and none other than This Is Us. Despite this, NBC did not air Rise at 10 pm as This Is Us’s lead-out. That time slot went instead to the short-lived Law & Order: True Crime in the fall, and later to Chicago Med.

Ultimately it was a stretch to try to brand Rise as a This Is Us-adjacent series. After all, This Is Us was neither a musical nor a teen drama. What they supposedly had in common was the ability to make viewers cry. NBC seemingly figured that since people cried watching This Is Us in the Tuesdays at 9 pm time slot in the fall and winter, they could get the same audience to cry watching Rise in the same time slot in the spring. It’s faulty logic, and may have even hurt Rise’s chance at success by setting unrealistic expectations.

While it is kind of odd that NBC aired Rise as a time slot successor to This Is Us instead of a lead-out, Rise would have been no more of a success had they chosen the latter. Rise did get the benefit of airing its series premiere at 10 pm after This Is Us’s season two finale. This Is Us hit a 2.8 Adults 18-49 demo rating with nearly 11 million viewers; Rise, just a 1.2 demo rating and 5.5 million viewers. Things didn’t get any better when it shifted to 9 pm for the rest of the season. It finished with a 0.7 demo rating, retaining half of The Voice’s lead-in. Not like it really mattered, as Rise had been canceled the previous week despite reportedly being an internal favorite. On the season, it averaged a 1.2 in the Live + 7 Adults 18-49 metric, coming in as one of the lowest-rated scripted series on NBC in the 2017-18 TV season.

The Second Attempt

The Village (2019)

The following season, NBC made it a bit more obvious they were trying to find a new hit series like This Is Us. The Village followed a group of neighbors in an apartment building, but played as a family drama. Like Rise, The Village was tasked with airing in the Tuesdays at 9 pm time slot that This Is Us’s 18-episode seasons left vacant in the spring. In the lead-up to the premiere, The Village was being compared to This Is Us, even more blatantly than Rise was. In fact, as part of an interview with the cast one day before the series premiere, The Village was billed by The Today Show as ‘the new show ‘This Is Us’ fans will love.’

As it turned out, This Is Us fans did not love The Village. The new series received the benefit of airing its first three episodes at 10 pm with This Is Us as a lead-in, and struggled every week. It premiered to just a 0.8 Adults 18-49 Live + Same Day demo rating the same night that This Is Us notched a 1.7. The following week, This Is Us remained steady, but The Village ticked down to a 0.7 demo rating. The week after that, This Is Us hit a 1.9 demo rating for its series finale; The Village’s 0.7 was an atrocious 37% retention.

Upon moving to 9 pm, it became apparent The Village was not being helped by This Is Us in the ratings. It maintained the same measly 0.7 rating from the previous two weeks, despite airing after the lower-rated and less compatible The Voice, which got a 1.2 rating that night. The problem was The Village was still doing poorly, and in the process hurting its lead-out, fellow freshman drama New Amsterdam. In fact New Amsterdam, which had already been renewed for a second season, rated no higher than The Village did when the two shows aired back-to-back. After airing just two episodes at 9 pm, NBC swapped The Village with The Voice in a move that was meant to help salvage New Amsterdam. The Village would wind up getting canceled at the end of May 2019, after 10 episodes and three time slots. The failed ‘next This Is Us’ has left behind little digital footprint, beyond Episode 7 (and only Episode 7) being available to purchase on Amazon.

What Went Wrong?

Despite the promotion and high expectations, Rise and The Village were undoubtedly flops. However, it’s unfair to conclude any attempt to add a new drama reminiscent of This Is Us to the schedule would fail. Just look at Parenthood, a family drama that concluded its six-season run on NBC not long before This Is Us premiered. It was never a massive hit the way This Is Us was, but did perfectly fine during a time when NBC typically struggled in the scripted department. The same season NBC premiered The Village, ABC made their attempt at a This Is Us-like series with A Million Little Things. ABC’s family drama did a bit better than The Village in same-day ratings and was well ahead of it with delayed viewing factored in. A Million Little Things did falter after its first season, though, and had the benefit of not having as high of expectations as a show that premiered behind This Is Us would have.

Given Rise and The Village were barely sampled by audiences to begin with, it’s pretty safe to say there just wasn’t much interest in these shows. There are a myriad of factors that made This Is Us a hit, going beyond it being a family drama that had the ability to make viewers tear up. However, NBC was hoping this one (supposed) similarity would be enough for Rise and The Village to succeed as well.

A couple years after that was proven not to work, NBC took from This Is Us’s three-different-timelines angle in Ordinary Joe. Like Rise and The Village, it also aired behind The Voice, although on Mondays and not as a This Is Us spring successor. Also like those two series, Ordinary Joe is not available to stream.

In a similar, but not the exact same, situation was the short-lived drama Council Of Dads. Originally slated to air behind This Is Us starting in March, it wound up premiering behind the hit series before airing regularly on Thursdays in the summer. It could only muster 0.3s and 0.4s in the Adults 18-49 Live + Same Day demo in its short season. At the very least, Vudu has episodes streaming.

The bottom line is viewers wanted to watch This Is Us, not a new show being hyped up as the next big thing simply because it had similar elements.

The Future Of Family Drama on NBC

With NBC failing to find a new series that captured the magic of This Is Us, the future of family drama’s presence on their schedule may look a bit like the past. Jason Katims may have missed with Rise, but Parenthood is still remembered today. All episodes were recently made available on Netflix, and there’s constantly chatter over a potential reboot. I’d wager NBC considers that option before another Rise or The Village makes its way onto the schedule.