Amazon subsequently acquired the rights to stream the series, and the previously unaired third season was released on Amazon Prime Video in some countries, such as Canada, in December 2020.[citation needed] The series made its U.S. debut in March 2021, while the third season was added the following month.[4][5]
Additional seasons were planned, but not produced as of 2025[update], since the show could not find a network willing to offset the production costs.[5]
Premise
Sam Loudermilk, a former music critic and a recovering alcoholic, is a substance abuse support group leader living in Seattle, who regularly doles out clever but acid-tongued critiques to his clients, his friends, and any random person he interacts with. Loudermilk, who does not have his life together in the way one might expect of a counselor, is somewhat nicer to the few people close to him, including his best friend and (usually) sober sponsor, Ben Burns, and his sponsee and unplanned roommate, Claire Wilkes.[1][6][7][8]
Frequent scenes depict Loudermilk's group sessions at a local church, with subplots deriving from the group members' lives. Farrelly expressed particular pride at the arc of Mugsy (Brian Regan) during season 3, where the character gradually rebuilds his relationship with his children before relapsing. The character of Cutter (Danny Wattley) features in a prominent subplot in season 1; Wattley was unable to reprise the role in seasons 2 and 3 after himself relapsing, but after going through recovery was planned to appear in a fourth season.[3]
Loudermilk originally premiered on AT&T's Audience Network.[5] Its first season debuted in 2017. On April 12, 2018, Audience renewed the series for a second season,[6] which it premiered on October 16, 2018.[7] On December 5, 2018, it was announced that Audience had renewed the series for Season 3,[11] but the network ceased operations in May 2020 before it could air.[3] Amazon Prime Video acquired the rights for the show and released Seasons 1 & 2 on March 12, 2021.[4] On April 27, 2021, the third season premiered on Amazon Prime.[5]
Despite being based in Seattle, Loudermilk is filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Episode writing contributors include Bobby Mort who previously worked for The Colbert Report, as well as Family Guy alums Ricky Blitt (who also plays Hiram in the cast) and Danny Smith.
Music
The first season uses tracks from Andy Shauf's album The Party as incidental and atmospheric score, with an eclectic soundtrack as a nod to Sam Loudermilk's past as a music critic.[12]
Reception
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes gives the first season an approval rating of 92% based on reviews from 12 critics, with an average rating of 7.12 out of 10. The site's critical consensus states:
Loudermilk's timely premise and sharp writing lay a solid foundation for a strong central performance from Ron Livingston, perfectly cast in this endearing dark comedy about a rock critic turned recovering alcoholic.[13]
Distribution
The series is distributed by Sony Pictures TV; and in Canada, Germany, Italy, the U.K.[5][8][14][15] In the United States, Amazon Prime released the series in 2021, debuting Season 3 in the same year. Netflix aired the series in 2023 through June 2025 to notable success.[16][17][18] Amazon Prime's streaming rights were not renewed in 2024 and have already expired.
A DVD Release of Season 1 was released in UK/Europe in 2018 on Via Vision Entertainment. No releases of Season 2 and 3 have been made on physical media.
Future
Though the cast was released from any contractual obligations to produce further episodes after the shutdown of Audience Network, co-creator Peter Farrelly has stated that "everybody wants to come back and do Season 4", and that a production network was being sought in October 2020. In total, Farrelly has envisioned seven seasons' worth of plotlines and character arcs.[3][5]
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