Glow, the Netflix series about a 1980s female wrestling troupe, will not return for a fourth season as planned because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Work had begun on a final season, but it now won't be completed or screened.

Netflix said Covid "makes shooting this physically intimate show with its large ensemble cast especially challenging".

Actress Kimmy Gatewood, who played Stacey, said she was "devastated", while fans and critics said the show's premature end "feels like a real loss".

Stars Alison Brie and Britt Baron also posted their reactions, with Brie saying she was "going to miss this".

Marc Maron, who played trainer Sam Sylvia, said the outcome "stinks".

In a statement to Deadline, creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch said: "Covid has killed actual humans. It's a national tragedy and should be our focus. Covid also apparently took down our show.

"Netflix has decided not to finish filming the final season of Glow. We were handed the creative freedom to make a complicated comedy about women and tell their stories. And wrestle. And now that's gone."

They said they knew there were things happening in the world that were "much bigger than this right now". They added: "But it still sucks that we don't get to see these 15 women in a frame together again."

The cast were three weeks into filming the fourth season when the pandemic struck in March, having finished the first episode and started work on the second, Deadline said.

But filming in Los Angeles with a large cast who are in close contact meant it had become too expensive and high-risk for Netflix to resume, the film industry website reported.

Fans and critics mourned the show's demise while praising it for being "so bold, warped and goofy, and yet, so emotionally sharp & realistic about the 1980s for women".

Netflix has also announced it has cancelled another female-centred comedy-drama, Teenage Bounty Hunters, about twin sisters who hunt for criminals. It will end after a single series.