‘Drop Dead Diva’ Resurrected For Season 5

Drop Dead Diva has scored an 11th hour stay of execution.

Lifetime renewed the dramedy for a fifth season a month and a half after pulling the plug on the series.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Drop Dead Diva was originally canceled because it became “cost prohibitive,” which usually means that the producers are unable to meet the cast’s salary demands. There was also speculation that the series didn’t fit into the trend of some of the network’s edgier programming, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt’s The Client List. To shake things up a bit, Kim Kardashian was cast in a recurring role, which ultimately did nothing to save the series from the chopping block.

At the time, however, there was the possibility that the series could get picked up by another network.

According to Deadline, which first broke the news of the renewal, the season 5 pickup comes about six months after the series wrapped its fourth season. Since the show premiered in July 2009, it has performed solidly in the ratings, with its most recent season consistently averaging over 2 million viewers in Live+Same Day. The series premiere pulled in 2.8 million viewers, but the most-viewed episode to date is the season 1 episode “Crazy,” which attracted 3.41 million viewers.

The season 4 finale attracted a season high of 2.76 million viewers.

So why did Lifetime decide to bring the series back to life? Apparently Sony TV, the show’s producer, was able to work out a new, more feasible financial model for the series.

Drop Dead Diva isn’t the only series to be renewed after being canceled. The same thing happened with AMC’s The Killing and FX’s Damages, among a number of other series.

Are you happy to see Drop Dead Diva get renewed? What do you think of this trend of bringing back recently canceled TV shows?