Hulu has canceled Deli Boys after two seasons, ending the critically well-received crime comedy just over two months after its six-episode second season debuted on the streamer.
Produced by Disney’s Onyx Collective and 20th Television, the series was set in Philadelphia but filmed in Chicago, using the city’s neighborhoods, stages and crews to create the world of Pakistani-American brothers Mir and Raj Dar. Season 2 was again shot entirely in and around Chicago, with production based at Cinespace.
For the local production community, the cancellation carries more weight than simply losing another title from a streamer’s lineup.
It means another Chicago-based crew is losing a returning series.
And those returning series matter. They provide months of steady employment, give younger crew members opportunities to move up through departments and help sustain the network of vendors, stages, rental houses, restaurants and businesses that depend on film and television production throughout the city.
A critically liked show that couldn’t find enough viewers
Created by Abdullah Saeed, Deli Boys followed brothers Mir and Raj Dar, played by Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh, who discover after their father’s death that the family’s seemingly legitimate convenience-store empire was also hiding a criminal enterprise.
Suddenly, the brothers have to figure out how to run both.
The series also starred Poorna Jagannathan, Brian George and Alfie Fuller, with Fred Armisen joining the cast in Season 2 as an eccentric casino magnate.
Both seasons received strong critical notices, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, the second-season audience did not reach the level Hulu needed to justify another renewal.
Hulu does not routinely disclose detailed viewing figures for all of its originals, and Deli Boys never appeared in Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings.
The cancellation leaves Hulu’s original comedy roster, excluding FX-produced shows, with Only Murders in the Building, Chad Powers, Not Suitable for Work and Alice and Steve, with Mosquito, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Nicholas Hoult, still to come.
Chicago stood in for Philadelphia
Like plenty of great Chicago productions before it, Deli Boys proved the city could convincingly play somewhere else.
Season 1 began filming in early 2024 following delays caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, with locations including Lincoln Square, Rogers Park and other parts of the city.
Season 2 returned to Chicago in late 2025 and early 2026, again working from Cinespace and shooting throughout local neighborhoods.
That production footprint made the show part of a broader television ecosystem that has become noticeably smaller over the past year.
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Another hole in Chicago’s TV production calendar
The timing makes the loss sting a little more. FX’s The Bear, one of Chicago’s most visible recent television successes, completed production on its fifth and final season earlier this year. FX subsequently confirmed that Season 5 would be the end of the acclaimed series.
Showtime’s The Chi also completed its run this summer after eight seasons, with its series finale arriving in July. The Lena Waithe-created drama spent years telling stories centered specifically on Chicago’s South Side while also providing sustained production work in the city.
Now Deli Boys joins them.
That leaves NBC’s Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med – collectively the long-running One Chicago franchise – alongside Apple TV’s Dark Matter as the primary continuing scripted television productions currently associated with Chicago. NBC renewed all three One Chicago shows for the 2026-27 season, while Dark Matter remains part of the city’s active production landscape.
Chicago continues to attract features and limited-run productions, and that work remains important. But a feature that shoots for several weeks is different from a television series that returns year after year.
Returning television shows create a kind of stability. Chicago has benefited enormously from that stability for more than a decade.
Losing The Bear, The Chi and now Deli Boys in relatively quick succession creates a very real gap.
More than a canceled show
For viewers, Deli Boys ends after two seasons. For the people who made it, the impact is more immediate.
It means stages going dark sooner than expected. Crew members looking for the next job. Vendors losing recurring business. Assistants losing opportunities to move into larger roles.
Those realities rarely make it into cancellation announcements.
But in a production city like Chicago, they matter. Deli Boys may have been about two brothers discovering that their family business was considerably more complicated than they imagined.
Behind the camera, however, it was also another piece of Chicago’s television economy.
And right now, Chicago could use more of those pieces, not fewer.
