NBC cancels Katherine Heigl comeback vehicle ‘State of Affairs’

NBC is getting out of the intelligence game, canceling “State of Affairs” after a single season.

The drama stars Katherine Heigl as Charleston Tucker, a CIA analyst who prepares the daily security briefing for the president, played by Alfre Woodard. The series was inspired in part by the experiences of Rodney Faraon, a former CIA briefer, and boasted the seasoned director-writer-producer Joe Carnahan as show runner.

The “Homeland”-esque show was meant to be a comeback vehicle for Heigl, who made an acrimonious exit from the Shonda Rhimes medical drama”Grey’s Anatomy” in 2010 and went on to star in a string of lackluster romantic comedies.

But it wasn’t meant to be. “State of Affairs” received largely negative reviews and generated middling ratings, despite a premium time slot following “The Voice.” The premiere opened to a respectable 8.7 million same-day viewers, but ratings quickly tumbled, with about half that many viewers tuning in to the show’s most recent episode in February.

“State of Affairs” is the second espionage-themed series to get the ax from NBC, which bet big on the spy genre this season. “Allegiance,” which starred Hope Davis as a former Russian agent with a son in the CIA, was pulled after just five episodes. The network has not yet announced the fate of the low-rated geopolitical thriller “American Odyssey.”

Follow @MeredithBlake on Twitter.