Tonight, it’s Medium Cool, hold the BGinCHI.
Not to worry, BG will be back to Medium Cool on January 17. I don’t want to name names, but someone has some book finishing to do. I am holding down the fort in the meantime.
Tonight, let’s talk about some great shows that were cancelled too soon. Firefly is at the top of my list. What are your top 5 shows that were cancelled after a season or two? Tell us about some great shows that never really got the chance to play out like they should have.
Don’t even get me started on the not-so-great shows that have gone on too long! We can talk about those, too.
Are there any shows that got it just right?
Reminder: next week we’ll be talking about The Wind of Change podcast. There’s still time to catch up on the 8 episodes if you’re interested.
WaterGirl
Terriers is also on the top of my list.
WaterGirl
Life also ended too soon.
zhena gogolia
I never watch current TV, so this is not a thread on which I’ll have much to contribute. I tried to watch Mrs. Maisel but got bored pretty quickly.
Bosom Buddies should have gone on much longer.
Now my problem is that Northern Exposure isn’t streamed anywhere.
WaterGirl
And there was a quirky little show called The Finder that maybe isn’t up there with those three, but it was a good show that ended too soon.
debbie
I’m going to pretend you aren’t limiting the thread to current series, so I’m submitting John Sayles’ Shannon’s Deal. It only lasted one year (1990-1991), but it remains one of my favorites. Does anyone remember it?
Agent 86
Patriot.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Looks like it’s all about the music. That is part of the issue with Life, too. The music is perfect, but they don’t want to pay for it.
Baud
CSI: Cyber.
WaterGirl
@debbie: This thread is absolutely not limited to current series. :-)
WaterGirl
@Baud: I love you, Baud, but you would be dead to me if I thought you meant that CSI: Cyber ended too soon. Any more than the first episode was too many!
Punchy
The Man Show.
WaterGirl
When you are listing shows, some of you guys aren’t saying whether they ended too soon, went on too long, or were just right.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
//
namekarB
On Netflix . . . Heaven’s Garden. Korean with subtitles. I was never much in to watching any series but this hooked me right away. No violence to speak of just a great look at rural life in Korea, Estranged daughter with children (including step child) moves back to the country. Also a peek into separated families between North and South Korea. A little tragedy, some comedic moments, loves lost and gained. Interplay between village residents. A lot of tears flowing both from sadness and happiness. I did not want the series to end.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Worst show ever made?
FlyingToaster
I’ve got a whole slew of too-early cancelled shows:
And, I fear, The Expanse, because the 30-year time gap between books 6 & 7 is probably insurmountable. Rewriting for a ~12 year time gap might work, but I also see them wanting to walk away from the whole casting nightmare.
Omnes Omnibus
The Maigret series with Rowan Atkinson was far too short. So was Zen.
PAM Dirac
People of Earth. Only two seasons. I thought it should have gone at least a couple more.
Baud
@WaterGirl: I don’t know if I’d go that far.
Scotius
I loved a show called “Profit” that aired for 4 episodes in 1996 vefore being cancelled. It starred Adrian Pasdar as a psychopath scheming his way up the corporate ladder. It hasn’t aged well but I still enjoy rewatching it on DVD once in a while.
WaterGirl
@FlyingToaster: Dollhouse was excellent!
CaseyL
@WaterGirl:
Glad to hear that, because I’m still pissed that Deep Space Nine was canceled so as not to “compete with” The Next Generation movies. Grrr.
(I just saw the documentary about DS9, “What We Left Behind,” and was pissed off/heartbroken all over again.)
And another oldie from the 1990s I wish had had more seasons, “Space: Above & Beyond,” (aka “Marines in Spaaaaace”). Very rah-rah, but also excellent characters and conflicts.
WaterGirl
@Baud: What shows do you think are worse than that one?
I should qualify that to mean shows of that genre. I almost never watch half-hour comedies and I never watch reality shows.
My two exceptions to half-hour comedies were Spin City and one other that is eluding me, but I watched because I loved the main actor in the show.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I have never heard of some of these series, probably because they weren’t given a chance to catch on before some idiot in the corner office cancelled them.
Faithful Lurker
I agree about The Finder. I really liked it, another show about Florida called Maximum Bob was cancelled too soon. It had the ghost of a young slave girl haunting the entitled wife of a corrupt Florida judge. You don’t get much better than that. I also really liked Lodge 47 that ended this year. I was hoping for another season.
Mike in NC
Two police shows set in Los Angeles: Boomtown and Southland
FlyingToaster
@WaterGirl: I felt that Dollhouse, like Dark Angel, was fucked over by the network. At this point, I rarely try to watch scripted TV on TV, because I can never fucking tell when shows are going to be on; I wait for shows to turn up on streaming services and then watch there.
I can actually tell when shows will be on Science or Discovery, so I’m infinitely more likely to watch Deadliest Catch or How the Universe Works than any scripted shows.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Both were British series. Zen featured Rufus Sewell as a detective in Rome who has to navigate Italian politics as well as solve crimes. Did I mention it is set in Rome?
TaMara (HFG)
@Faithful Lurker: Loved Maximum Bob.
Don K
I totally agree about Firefly. It was a great show.
Also, while it ran for its planned five years, Babylon 5 was kind of wrecked because the fifth season wasn’t greenlighted until fairly late in production for season four, so the producers crammed the climax into a couple of episodes and brought the planned 5-year arc to the desired conclusion at the end of season four. As a result, season five is anti-climactic and kind of meandering and boring. Still, it’s a great show, worth the time investment of watching all the way through (or at least the first four seasons). Not really on-topic here, but it’s always bugged me.
RSA
@WaterGirl:
The Finder was great! It had its flaws, most notably how the Romani threads were handled, but I thought the leads and the plots were excellent. I was sorry that it ended, and where it ended. I even picked up the source novels, but they were different and not as engaging.
My submission: Brimstone, canceled after one season. A detective (Peter Horton, then most familiar from 30 something) is released from Hell by the Devil (John Glover) to capture 113 escaped hellions. Horton was good in his role. Glover stole every scene, though, and to this day is my favorite Satan in TV or movies.
TaMara (HFG)
MIddleman
Wonderfalls
Firefly, of course
The Book of Daniel
Forever
Instinct
off the top of my head…
Brachiator
Hmmm.
“Star Trek TOS” is an obvious choice. There was an old SF series “Space: Above and Beyond” that had possibilities
There was an 80s comedy with Tim Reid, “Frank’s Place” that I wish had had more than a season.
I wish that “Game of Thrones” would have had a longer final season and a better ending.
I think that “Cheers,” with Dana Delaney, who did a guest episode as a teacher, might have had some more life in it.
ETA: I agree with the positive comments above about Babylon 5. It would have been nice to have the fifth season run out more smoothly. This is a series that I would be immensely curious to see rebooted.
I kinda liked Firefly. Great cast with good chemistry. But I don’t much care for “westerns” ported into outer space.
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: I loved both of those!
RSA
@Omnes Omnibus:
What a wonderful show. I still remember Sewell in his black suit, as stylish a detective as anyone could imagine.
Just One More Canuck
Too soon? Dead Like Me, with a really great cast including Mandy Patinkin and Jasmine Guy – lasted 2 seasons but never found its audience
WaterGirl
@FlyingToaster: I have Tivo so it doesn’t matter when they switch the times around because I set it up as a Season Pass and they record whenever it’s on.
My pet peeve is fucking football that messes up the time for shows on Sunday nights. That’s hard to control for, though once I get burned on that by the first game of the season, I set the last show on that channel on Sunday to record for an extra hour.
CaseyL
@Mike in NC: Ooh, that reminds me of a cop show I quite liked and wish had lasted another season: Graceland. Very suspenseful premise, with an internal investigator assigned to a group of undercover narcs in order to see if their leader had “gone native,” as it were. While also becoming, or pretending to become, a member of the group.
The premise may have been too torturous to hold up after two seasons – after a while, you figure the main characters have to twig to what’s going on or they’re idiots – but I loved the plot twists.
Yutsano
The LEXX. Very strange sci-fi show. If you looked past the hypersexuality of it there were some really brilliant concepts in it. Only had two seasons but it could have definitely told more tales.
@CaseyL: Space: Above and Beyond is high on my lists of reboots. They were starting to get into the concepts of how to possibly communicate with something so alien and then it got the axe. Yes Teufelhunden in space has appeal, but after the first season clumsily built the paying board they were THIS CLOSE to exploring beyond “blow all the shit up” stories. I don’t think that one will get a recycle however.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Speaking of Rufus Sewell…they cancelled Eleventh Hour! I really loved that show.
Another Scott
I don’t watch a lot of TV any more, and we never stream anything.
Shows that I thought ended much too soon include (in no particular order):
Star Trek, The Tracy Ullman Show, The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr., Cosmos, The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Wyatt Salamanca
I’m sure I’ll think of other shows later, but these are the first ones that come to mind:
100 Centre Street
First Monday
Freaks and Geeks
The Great American Dream Machine
Hot l Baltimore
My World and Welcome to It
The Name of the Game
The Outer Limits
Rubicon
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
Van Dyke and Company
Wonderland
RSA
@TaMara (HFG): Wonderfalls is another great choice. Caroline Dhavernas was so good as the lead, and she had a great supporting cast. The writing was the core of the series, but I think it needed the actors to make it work.
OldDave
I rarely have time to watch prime time TV, and that’s been the case for some time – which is to say I never saw Firefly during its broadcast run. But I’ve certainly watched it more than once since and yes – a tragedy it only ran for a season. And since I’m no longer a prime time viewer, I don’t have any recent “departed too soon” programs to include here.
Most of my favorite broadcast series ran for some time (four or more seasons) – Northern Exposure, Night Court, WKRP. Twin Peaks only ran for three.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: Graceland was great, I thought, and had an excellent cast.
Martin Schafer
Firefly
Sense 8
Dollhouse
CaseyL
@Another Scott: Seconding The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr.
This thread is sparking a lot of trips down TV memory lane.
WaterGirl
@Wyatt Salamanca: Rubicon! That was a great show, only lasted one season.. Should have been on my list.
Peter
Deadwood. Some of the best TV writing ever for one of the great ensemble casts of all time. The recent wrap-up movie didn’t really do it for me, sadly.
WaterGirl
A&E cancelled Longmire too soon, but at least Netflix picked it up.
OldDave
James Burke! I never thought to include programs like these on my list.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes. I couldn’t remember the name of this series. Very good stuff.
WaterGirl
@Peter: What was Deadwood about? I didn’t watch it because it seemed kind of creepy.
RSA
Farscape had four seasons but it ended on a cliffhanger (series leads blown up?) that wasn’t well-resolved by a later, follow-on miniseries.
It had all the richness of the universes of competing TV/movie properties at the time–Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate–but it was quirkier and could be either darker or more fun, depending.
Delk
Pushing Daisies ended too soon.
rosalind
entering the wayback machine: “Frank’s Place” starring Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell-Reid, set in New Orleans. loooved it. gone in a year.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I don’t know. Of that genre, it might be the worst.
LuciaMia
Really dating myself: Cast your mind back to Dark Shadows, that gothic soap opera of the late 60’s. One of our local stations showed , what seemed like a copycat, a soap called Strange Paradise. Started out on a Caribbean island, and included fun things like witches covens and the Serpent God. (don’t ask ). Like I said, one sultry summer an episode popped up every afternoon, only to disappear come fall.
Peter
@WaterGirl:
A town in Gold-rush era South Dakota. Brilliant stuff. Not horror, though not without violence. Rated R for sure but creepy it isn’t. HBO cancelled it because it won a bunch of awards and the actors all demanded more money.
stacib
Picket Fences. It could have easily gone another couple seasons.
Scout211
TV shows that ended too soon:
China Beach
Crime Story
Veronica Mars
[And adding my vote to] The Adventures of Brisco County, jr
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@Wyatt Salamanca: you’re going way back, and I love it. Hot l and My World, for sure. Although it’s just possible they did what they could do with the time they had.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@Delk: agreed. Also, Better Off Ted.
LuciaMia
@rosalind: That was wonderful! Remember the first episode when he horrifies the chef by saying, “Cajun and Creole, arent they the same thing?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meh, the show’s Neo-Confedrate subtext is pretty blatant, even my conservative friends cringed when they saw the full series.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
@rosalind: “That’s Ed!…You got Ed!…Ed’s dead!!!!” Was a bit of standout dialogue from that one.
WaterGirl
@Delk: That one was quirky for sure, and excellent.
piratedan
They recently drew the curtain on Stumptown which was sad because I was really warming to that show…
In a shout out to the past, I’m one of the few that actually enjoyed the X-Files spinoff of The Lone Gunmen. I was also hoping for another season for Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
in a shout out to stories/novels that could have been made, I have always wanted to see Lawrence Block’s Burgler stories brought to life (yes, I know of the existence of the Whoopi Goldberg movie) because they have the right amount of wry humor about them that I find enjoyable.
If we’re talking about having the setting also act as a character, I’m kind of surprised that no one has attempted to do Hillerman’s Leaphorn/Chee’s stories. It’s the kind of story telling that is heavily character and culturally driven that I am forever hopeful seen brought to life.
On the Science Fiction/Fantasy side, I’ve wondered if anyone will pick up The Black Company series as it would seem to be a great fit to be the next big HBO thang. Another would be David Brin’s Uplift Saga, who knows, one day… maybe.
RepubAnon
@Brachiator: Yes, it’s also a shame that Michael O’Hare (Commander Sinclair) had to leave the show for health reasons after Season 1. One wonders how the story would have played out if Commander Sinclair had not been replaced with Captain Sheridan.
burnspbesq
“China Beach” and “Alien Nation.” I also could have done with another season of “Friday Night Lights.”
JoyceH
Am I the only person (in the world!) who watched Odyssey Five? I got so INTO that show!
piratedan
@Another Scott: concur with the shoutouts to Briscoe County Jr and the James Burke offerings.
eddie blake
@Don K:
babylon 5 was fantastic. so well crafted as a narrative with wonderful payoffs in the writing and character arcs. totally agree that the last season is an outlier.
crusade was totally mangled by the station and run completely out of sequence. that could have been a wonderful show, but TNT really dropped the ball.
WaterGirl
@Peter: Huh. I googled it and it sounds more like a western. With Timothy Olyphant! How did I miss that?
Justified was a great show. I remember being disappointed when it ended (google says after 6 years).
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
Hannibal, my personal favorite of whatever metallic age of TV that was, nailed it. I couldn’t imagine stretching it one more year. It was just time for Him and Will to leap off that cliff in each other’s arms, as was their destiny. Sigh.
billcinsd
I would agree with TaMara’s Middleman cancelled way too early, and whoever suggested The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
I would add
Andy Richter Controls the Universe, canceled too soon
The Tick (live action [not the Amazon one]), canceled too soon
Leverage, about right, the last season was running out of ideas
Time Team, too long, the changes over the last season or two to bring in hot young presenters was a bad move to me
KBS
Wonderfalls, Dead Last, and Reaper all ended too soon for me! In addition to many others mentioned above.
eddie blake
@Another Scott:
oh, man. haven’t thought of the adventures of brisco county, jr. in a VERY long time. gooooood shit.
burnspbesq
ETA: and the B5 spinoff “Crusade.”
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
Stumptown! I knew one had been cancelled recently that I really liked but I couldn’t think of it.
Such a great show. I don’t think the quirky shows get enough of a chance.
Totally unrelated, I liked For The People which was cancelled after two seasons. It was topical and they had shows about ICE and Republicans doing voter intimidation, and I wondered if it was cancelled because of that.
Wyatt Salamanca
@There are those who call me…tim… (Still posh):
WaterGirl triggered me. It’s striking to me that so many shows I liked never achieved mass appeal. If this thread had been extended to include educational/public affairs programs, I could have probably thought of half a dozen more to include on my list
Steve in the ATL
@WaterGirl: holy &@$#—just yesterday I was thinking about how much I liked that show and wished it had lasted longer than a season! First time in years I (or maybe anyone) has thought of it….
Yutsano
@Mike in NC: I. LOVED. SOUTHLAND. I think it was a wee bit too ahead of its time with the married cop coming to terms with his sexuality plotline. But they kept changing its time slot as I recall.
geg6
Can’t really think of many others that ended too soon other than Star Trek OS.
Ones that went on too long are too many to mention, but the most egregious offender was one that started as a great show: Lost. Never saw a pilot that so hooked me in and was so impressively done. But by Season 4, it had started to lose the plot. Totally bummed me out how bad the last few seasons were. And don’t get me started on the series finale.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Zen! Yes, I’d love to see more of that.
Home Fires needed a few more seasons.
eddie blake
@WaterGirl:
yeah. it’s the town where wild bill hickock was shot dead. that’s how the show starts. him and calamity jane in a rough-and-tumble mining town.
then it goes well off the rails. i never knew there were so many inflections and usage of the term, ‘cocksucker’. ian mcshane was AMAZING in deadwood.
Peter
@WaterGirl: It’s definitely a Western. A dark and wonderful one. Tim owns one of my drawings; his mother-in-law was my gallerist in Miami for a number of years. So I got to hear all the behind-the-scenes news about the cancellation.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
Oooo, I loved Northern Exposure!
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
His girlfriend might have been part of the scenery too.
Tehanu
@Omnes Omnibus: Loved both Maigret and Zen.
@CaseyL: DS9 is still my favorite of all Trek shows and you’re absolutely right.
@Wyatt Salamanca: My World and Welcome to It, absolutely.
@There are those who call me…tim… (Still posh): Better Off Ted! thanks for reminding me!
@piratedan: au contraire, you can find Skinwalkers, Coyote Waits, and A Thief of Time on DVD — if I remember right, with Wes Studi and Adam Beach. Terrific.
My own favorites that didn’t last: Bakersfield P.D.; It’s Like, You Know; Doctor, Doctor; Andy Richter Controls the Universe; Buffalo Bill; The Duck Factory.
Walker
Brisco County Junior as a genius show way before its time.
Archon
Count me in as being shocked to hear stumptown got cancelled.
geg6
Thought of another that ended too soon. Anybody remember Wiseguy starring Ken Wahl? That was a great show, I think, for all of two seasons.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: It’s because we emailed. Mind meld. People don’t give email nearly enough credit. :-)
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Me too. It went on long enough, but I would really like to rewatch it now. I love the whole cast, but John Cullen and Adam Arkin are so great. Also all the non-professionals, Elaine Miles and Darren Burrows et al. And there’s a great episode where Regina King plays God.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
I loved that show. So many unbelievable storylines. “Mr. Sardonicus”!
ETA: And miss me with your Jonathan Banks on Breaking Bad. Jonathan Banks is McPike on Wiseguy now and forever!
Amir Khalid
@piratedan:
So am I. That show should have been picked up for a full season.
geg6
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Damn, you reminded me of another favorite, Freaks and Geeks. Great, great show with some amazing actors.
eddie blake
hate to be the contrarian, but i can’t stand DS9. they stole SO much from straczynski, slapped a fresh coat of paint on Babylon 5, added the paramount budget and the trek imprimatur, and walked away from the theft.
….and the show shoulda continued until bajor was admitted to the federation, as that was what sisko was tasked to do in episode #1.
whatever. people will like what they like, but that shit was a blatant rip-off.
eta-raised on ToS, total trek-head, here, have watched pretty much everything they’ve produced with the exception of lower decks and discovery season #3, but DS9 was SO unoriginal.
stinger
@WaterGirl: Life, Boomtown, and Once and Again all ended too soon, IMO.
John Revolta
There was a very dark and funny show called Action in 1999 starring Jay Mohr and Ileana Douglas (and Buddy Hackett!) that was a satire on Hollywood. Barely lasted a season but it was great. And yes, My World and Welcome To It.
Tehanu: Yes, Buffalo Bill! I only remember seeing a few episodes but it was really good.
WaterGirl
@eddie blake: What is DS9? (I googled: Star Trek, Deep Space Nine)
WaterGirl
@stinger: Yes! Once and Again was great, too.
Feathers
Dare Me. They done this one wrong. Based on Megan Abbott’s very noir novel about best friends pulled apart when a new cheerleading coach becomes (dark) mentor to the working class, less outgoing of the two. It was originally set up at HBO as a limited series, but they made Euphoria instead. So it moved to USA as a regular series at the end of 2019. It got rave reviews, made all sorts of 2020 best of lists, but it ended as the pandemic arrived, and productions started shutting down. Apparently the athleticism and close contact of the cheer scenes made filming in 2020 not feasible, and the ratings weren’t high enough to move it into the queue for scarce post-pandemic production facilities.
Good news? It lands on Netflix Dec 29. I hope it finds an audience there, it really deserves one. David Lynch inflected cheerleading noir? More please. And it explores the lives of teenage girls in a way few shows have done. Apparently one of the reasons it was so hard to find a home for was Abbott’s refused to make a boyfriend come between the friends.
@Omnes Omnibus: The norm on British shows is to sign contracts for one season and get the gang back together if needed. So everyone has to be available again for a second or third season to happen.
There keeps being talk of a second season of The Night Manager, but I think the Le Carre novels would be better suited to the American Horror or Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor treatment, where the series are done with the same production team, and the actors becoming a repertory troupe, with a rotating cast playing different roles and character types each season.
eddie blake
@WaterGirl:
deep space 9, the second of the trek revival shows, after the next generation.
lgerard
Party Down
Craig
Totally agree with Firefly. That was a cool show.
Nathan Barley, a killer little insane satire from Charlie Brooker. Could have gone longer.
Fleabag. I’d have loved to see more, but she was smart to end it perfectly.
HinTN
@zhena gogolia:
What is up with that. It got a little weird and lost at the end but the first years were damn good.
HinTN
@zhena gogolia:
What is up with that. It got a little weird and lost at the end but the first years were damn good.
WaterGirl
@Feathers:
Dare Me is not coming up on Netflix when I search for it.
stinger
@zhena gogolia: “McPikus Interruptus”!
Shalimar
I was really fond of Key West, an early Fox show that ran for half a season in 1993. I haven’t seen an episode since they first aired, so I can’t say if it was actually good or I just had weird taste then. It was very quirky.
WaterGirl
@HinTN: I commented up thread that I googled it and it looks like the music would cost $$ and they are all too cheap to care about anything but the money. That was my take from a quick google, anyway.
stinger
Ran just about right: The Good Wife. Especially if you get to the final episode and immediately watch the first episode again. A perfect circle.
Craig
@geg6: I rewatched that recently. Still pretty good. Jonathan Banks, and early Kevin Spacey.
MizPurple
One of my all-time faves that I think got it just right is Six Feet Under. Topped with one of the best closing episodes ever. I loved the Aaron Sorkin show Sports Night, a show about so much more than sports, but it was cut off far too soon and in a very unsatisfying way.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: Your mention of Key West made me think of Don Johnson’s show Nash Bridges.
WaterGirl
@stinger: That was a great show, but I won’t subscribe to their CBS All Access in order to re-watch it. The show that followed on All Access was good – they aired the first season on network TV right before the pandemic started.
It’s one thing to pay for streaming but it’s another thing to have to pay for streaming of network shows. I feel like we’re already paying for that if we have cable.
Mathguy
@Don K: On B5, absolutely. I still enjoyed season 5, but it was a mess.
I would also submit The Dresden Files on SyFy as a show that was cut before it had a chance to find its niche.
Geoduck
@Yutsano: Lexx ran for four seasons, and even had a finale that sort of wrapped things up. You might want to see if there’s some stuff you missed.
People are saying Star Trek TOS, but that third season was pretty weak and hit hard with budget cuts. (From an already pretty thin budget.) If they could have had more money along with not be cancelled, OK.
One of my favorite short-lived shows was Eerie Indiana. Smart and fun little romp that only lasted one season (more or less).
And one that got it right was The Muppet Show. Five great seasons, and Henson quit while it was still good rather then try to drag it out.
And there’s talk of some sort of Firefly reboot being put into production.
Ajabu
No love for The Wire?
I thought it should have gone on forever but the five seasons were perfect.
tomtofa
Going back a ways, Millennium was one I still think of now and then. Sort of a dark version of the X-Files.
In a way, both too short and too long.
The second season developed into an apocalypse; the 3rd was almost a reboot, and took a while to get going – but it finally did, and was cancelled.
stinger
American Family (Edward James Olmos, Raquel Welch, Esai Morales, Sonia Braga) could have run forever, as far as I was concerned.
burnspbesq
I loved “Spenser: For Hire,” but it had to die when it did or Avery Brooks wouldn’t have been available to play Sisko.
JDM
@RSA: we love Wonderfalls, and Pushng Daisies, and now are watching Dead Like Me (where the protoganist is a young woman who uses snarkiness to keep others at a safe distance emotionally, i.e. Jaye 2.0).
in an episode of Dead Like Me (from 2003) the storyline had a brief aside about “assholes” who were dangerous because of their followers. There were four clips as examples: Hitler, Idi Amin, Stalin, and Donald Trump.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: I saw that and it makes sense. I has a sad.
Also, don’t know what’s up with the double comment…
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: The good part of Spin City ended way too soon because Michael J. Fox had to quit. Replacing him with Charlie Sheen playing himself was terrible.
Yutsano
Due South. Straitlaced Mountie runs into American streetwise cop. First Canadian produced show to air in the US. CBS killed it after 1 season but it got rescued for four more in Canada and the UK. I’m not sure how the premise would hold up now but had a best doggo.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
I’ve never watched Breaking Bad, so never had that problem. ;) I had no idea how they could possibly match or beat that first season but then season two with that creepy storyline of the brother and sister with Kevin Spacey! OMG!
stinger
@WaterGirl: I thought I would probably like The Good Fight, but didn’t want to pay to see something that would also have commercials.
cope
I agree about “Dark Angel” and “My World and Welcome to It”. To the list of shows ended before we might have wanted them to, I would add “Being Human”, a BBC production and later North American reworking about a vampire, werewolf and ghost living as humans. Also “The 4400″, based on the premise of 4,400 disappeared people reappearing in a flash of light. If my wife were writing this, she would have started with “Schitt’s Creek” although I think it came to a good and timely end.
Mousebumples
@Scout211: I loved the first season of VM, the second season was less good, and I’m disappointed at the ending to the s4 revival. (**avoiding spoilers intentionally)
Seconds to those mentioned here –
Leverage is (last I heard) being rebooted, with Noah Wyle joining some of the original cast.
I also wish Limitless had gotten more than a season. I only noticed it on Netflix after it had been canceled, and they did kinda wrap things up, but I love the premise and storylines.
And, when talking about this with my husband, i just broke his mind by telling him that i couldn’t get into firefly and stopped watching after 3 or 4 eps. (my college friends were super into it… Just not my thing, though i enjoy other joss whedon stuff)
He also voted for Arrested Development. I didn’t start watching until it was “back” on Netflix, so I feel differently, i guess. ?
stinger
@Yutsano: Loved Due South! Own it on DVD.
debbie
@Peter:
Deadwood was excellent. It was created by David Milch, who previously wrote for NYPD Blue.
stinger
That’s all I can remember of that series! Memorable, to say the least.
eddie blake
@cope:
seconded. i really enjoyed being human.
debbie
@geg6:
There’s a channel here on broadcast tv that runs most of the Star Trek series on weeknights. I’m not sure I agree about Star Trek OS. I liked it much better during its original run. It seems kind of creaky now.
patrick II
@Watergirl
I am late to the show here, but you might as well been looking over my shoulder.
Firefly
Terriers
Life
The Finder
Battle Creek.
Firefly: Nothing much to say. FOX screwed up.
Terriers: The guy who produced “Terriers” was pretty bitter. As a new show it competed with another new show, “The walking Dead”, and got killed in the ratings. He said “I guess we didn’t have enough violence”.
Life: Damien Lewis has received much praise for his work in that show, but I though Sarah Shahi was great. Her character was smart, complex, had troubles but not overdone, and was a nice foil to Lewis’s character. Skeptical but bemused.
The Finder: That was fun and quirky. Maddie Hansen, who played Willa got a lead role in a one year series in 2018 called “Impulse”. It was a coming of age story for a young woman who had undergone sexual assault and had an unusual power. Told with great sensitivity. She was very good.
Michael Clarke Duncan passed away from a heart attack not long after the show ended, so the show would probably not lasted much longer without him anyway, his gentle-giant persona added so much.
Battle Creek: I liked everything about this show, except they might have dialed back the anger on Detective Agnew from a 10 to about a 5. More like Ray Vecchio in Due South.
pika
@Scotius: I only watched the pilot, Scotius, but the vision of a nekkid Adrian Pasdar curled up in his cardboard box scars my mind still…
rosalind
@LuciaMia: imdb has this piece of trivia about the show which if true is fascinating:
“According to Tim Reid, Walter Cronkite, who was a member of the board of directors at CBS, told him that the series was cancelled because of the final episode. In “The King of Wall Street”, a Wall Street tycoon condemns junk bonds. Laurence Tisch, the CEO of CBS, was offended by this episode because he had bought the network with junk bonds. He demanded that the series be cancelled despite the objections of Cronkite and other board members.”
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: Due South should have been on my list!
Great show. I have tried to find it a bunch of times with no luck. Loved the main character, his partner, the dog, everything.
WaterGirl
@stinger: They have commercials on their All Access streaming? Ridiculous.
pika
@eddie blake: Deep Space 9 remains my favorite Star Trek, and I kind of think it went on one season too long–the Jadzia thing, the introduced-then-ended romance between Kira and Odo, and the fizzling out of the whole Dominion storyline diluted what was the most inclusive and imaginative of the shows until Discovery. I really like Discovery, though I wish it looked less like an NFL broadcast in aesthetics, but such is CBS…
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples: Limitless! I loved that show. Seems like every show that does nuance doesn’t make it very long.
WaterGirl
@eddie blake: Yes! Being Human! I started watching Stumptown because of the actor on Being Human. I think he’s great, and then they cancelled Stumptown, too.
pika
@Don K: Oh it’s so on-topic. I used to rush home in order to see Babylon 5, and the show was my first introduction to getting involved on usenet. I was so disappointed when they faded out the Shadow Wars. But Sheridan’s last night with Delenn still moves me to tears…
WaterGirl
@patrick II: We could most definitely watch TV together!
Michael Clarke Duncan provided the balance that made the show work. I was so sad when he passed away, loved him.
Scout211
@WaterGirl:
Yes, Due South
And that reminded me of another show set in Chicago,
Early Edition
StevEagle
Terriers
Freaks and Geeks
The Grinder (one of Rob Lowe’s finest performances; funny concept but execution missed a little bit. Fred Savage is weak as the “straight man”)
The Leftovers (def one of the greatest shows ever and it wraps up nicely, but more seasons would’ve been very welcome)
The Knick (like the Leftovers- one of the best shows ever and while it wrapped up the Clive Owen storyline absolutely perfectly, More seasons wouldve been great!)
and maybe not appropriate because it could still happen, but there really needs to be a Bob’s Burgers spinoff about Teddy. He’s so sad and funny! The Thanksgiving episode where it comes out that he’s a hoarder just opened so many possibilities in my mind; it would probably have to have a more melancholy edge than Bob’s (kinda like Frasier was to Cheers maybe?)
and of course Community. That show could go on forever and Donald Glover never should have left! (Atlanta is so good but Troy Barnes is one of the great TV characters of all time.) #sixseasonsandamovie
Amir Khalid
The ‘Nam: Tour of Duty was roughly contemporary with China Beach, and told of the American war in Vietnam mostly from the enlisted soldier’s point of view. I hesitate to mention it because I feel it ran as long as it needed to. But it would be good to have shows out around now that present a similar soldier’s eye view of, say, the American engagement in Afghanistan or Iraq.
eddie blake
@pika:
that’s just it. it wasn’t imaginative at ALL. they lifted SO much from babylon 5, it wasn’t even funny, down to the names of certain characters. straczynski pitched his show to paramount, they checked out his bible, they said “thanks, but no thanks,” and then produced a show about a space station right by a jump-gate, er i mean, wormhole. then, following the course laid out, they added the dominion war (and mr worf) as the ratings were flagging(in a clear, albeit ham-handed reflection of the shadow war, which was literally, er, foreshadowed in the first season of B5, whereas the dominion war sort of fell from the sky in what, season 3? 4?).
iirc, the only thing straczynski thought was clever about DS9 was the defiant, which inspired the whitestar fleet.
yeah- also, agree. the ezri thing was silly. as i said earlier, the show needed (imo) to end with bajor’s admission into the federation. but yeah, not original. fresh coat of paint over someone else’s work.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Your comment made me think of the cop show that was set in Chicago – The Chicago Code. I grew up in Chicago, and I liked the lead actors and liked the show. I wonder what I would think of it if I saw it now, after this past year.
zhena gogolia
@Tehanu:
Buffalo Bill was hilarious!
Bruuuuce
Late to the thread, but that’s what happens when I nap to be fresh for the Giants game at night.
Another vote for The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr
How about The Prisoner? Some would say it ran just long enough, but I could see it getting a second season.
Alien Nation. Ended on a cliffhanger, and even though it had follow-up movies, they’re not the same thing as a real season.
Concur on the wish that Babylon 5 hadn’t had to compress its ending and then find it had to stretch with thin material for its fifth season.
I saw a mention of The Starlost upthread. I disagree that it was too short: the initial version was terribly executed. However, if we had a thread about series ripe for a remake a la Battlestar Galactica, I would push that to the absolute front of the queue.
zhena gogolia
@HinTN:
I think WaterGirl is right, there’s too much original music and nobody wants to pay for it.
patrick II
@WaterGirl:
Due South is on free Youtube. The first year is :here.
Due South was on for four or five years. I liked the first two, then two things happened:
1. They replaced Detective Ray Vecchio.
2. Paul Gross got more control over the scripts and direction of the show and it went from sly to silly. Leslie Nielson came on to increase the silliness and that was it for me.
But the first few years were don’t miss tv for me.
zhena gogolia
@stinger:
Oh, man, I googled that. I can’t unsee it.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Yeah, that was amazing. Mel and Susan Profitt.
Craig
Ray Donovan could have ended a lot cleaner.
WaterGirl
@patrick II: Thanks!
The pairing of Paul Gross and Ray was what made the whole thing work. Do you know why they replaced Ray?
Good to know about the later seasons. I don’t know why they mess with success.
zhena gogolia
I liked Civil Wars with Peter Onorati, which wasn’t on very long. There’s a great episode with Fran Drescher and Wallace Shawn as a comedy-writing couple. It has one of the funniest lines I’ve ever heard on a drama show. Shawn wants to divorce Drescher even though he still loves her, because she refuses to take her meds since she needs to be depressed (or manic, can’t remember which) in order to do comedy. But Shawn explains that the last straw was when they were at a Catholic wedding and as the priest came down the aisle she said loudly, “Somebody tell the drag queen his purse is on fire.”
ETA: It also had Mariel Hemingway and Debi Mazar, and hey, what ever happened to Alan Rosenberg?
StevEagle
@There are those who call me…tim… (Still posh):
yes! Hannibal was so great; it really hit this sweet spot near the end of season 1 and season 2 is phenomenal- Mads Mikkelsen is just so good and the show just gets so bonkers there were times when I couldn’t believe it was being shown on network TV (the violence/gore is just absurd at times). What I really love is how they start off as a killer-of-the week kind of structure but then slowly shed that pretense and focus on Hannibal and I-forget-his-name. And yes, the ending is so perfect that I laughed out loud with joy. I think that the show’s version of “The Silence of the Lambs” storyline would’ve been great though
WaterGirl
I just took a quick peep at M4’s Hogfather thread, and I noticed that someone said The West Wing is going away. I think it’s been on Netflix, does anyone happen to know where it’s leaving from and where it’s going, and when?
Super Dave
This show ran 7 seasons, but was some of the best tv I’ve ever seen. It can’t be streamed anywhere that I know of, but is available on dvd/blu-Ray…
Homicide: Life on the Streets
patrick II
@WaterGirl:
The actor (David Marciono) had another offer with some contract obligations at (I think) CBS. He was certainly missed. The next guy was O.K., but not as droll.
Marciono has most recently appeared on “Bosch” on Prime. Still playing a detective too.
Richard Grant
After agreeing about Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Dollhouse, Firefly, Middleman and Stumptown. I would also add:
Agent Carter
Invader Zim
The Marshall
The Sandbaggers
Stella
Terminator: The Sara Conner Chronicles
Vengeance Unlimited
piratedan
@Tehanu: ty for the references, I will look; obviously when they advertised those, it never pierced my bubble, appreciate the correction/information.
zhena gogolia
@Super Dave:
Yes, it was brilliant.
zhena gogolia
@patrick II:
He was in Civil Wars too!
Craig
@Richard Grant: Invader Zim is bonkers, I love that show.
Kristine
@piratedan:
The one with Elijah Wood as the brother? I *loved* that series. It was so goofy and occasionally brutal, but it had so much heart.
VOR
Mindhunters – Two seasons on Netflix, it is about the FBI Behavioral Science group learning about serial killers in the 1970s. The timeframe is so early they have to invent terminology. Season 2 was about the Atlanta murders in 1979-81.
Travelers – Three seasons on Netflix. Great cast of mostly young actors.
Wyatt Salamanca
OT
Carl Sagan died on this date December 20th in 1996.
Just One More Canuck
@StevEagle: Rob Lowe was in a british show called Wild Bill – he played a cop from Miami who moved to a small town in England – it only lasted 6 episodes but it was very good
WaterGirl
@patrick II: Thanks. Bosch is on my list.
eddie blake
i woulda liked it if bruce timm and paul dini’s justice league unlimited had continued. i also really enjoyed avengers: earth’s mightiest heroes, which had the next season all teed up and ready to go, but disney pulled the plug on it.
Kristine
The John Constantine series with Matt Ryan should’ve gotten a second season. It was just starting to pick up steam, and Matt Ryan was finally learning how to dial it back down from 11. I know he showed up again in Legends of Tomorrow, but I never watched that series.
Omnes Omnibus
@Feathers: I understand the norms of British show making. I, nevertheless, would like to have seen more episodes of both of the shows I mentioned. Which was rather the point of the whole post.
billcinsd
One I forgot from the late 90s — Remember WENN an AMC comedy/drama that was cancelled too early. Story about a late 30s/early 40s radio station in Pittsburgh
An episode https://vimeo.com/300896784
stinger
@zhena gogolia: Sorry!
Adam C
Call me crazy, but I always thought The Simpsons was so good it deserved more than seven seasons.
What?
Anyway, I caught Star Trek: the Animated Series on Netflix and I think it really holds up well as a continuation of TOS. Better than season three.
frosty
Just right: The Dick Van Dyke Show, early 60s, Veep.
Too long: Big Bang Theory. I DVR’d the last 3 seasons, but can’t find the interest in watching them. Liked the whole premise and the characters in the beginning. Silicon Valley. I just kind of lost interest.
I don’t recognize most of the shows you all are mentioning. I haven’t sat down to watch a series when it came on since GoT and Veep ended, but that was my Sunday nights for a while.
patrick II
@WaterGirl:
Marciono is on only intermittently if he is working on a case with Bosch. He’s a very likable guy though.
UncleEbeneezer
@OldDave: YES!!! Why has no one made a more modern version (not counting Burke’s Connections 2)??
UncleEbeneezer
Underground
Borgen (Denmark)
The Bridge (Sweden)
WaterGirl
@patrick II: I have liked him in everything I have seen him in.
Feathers
@HinTN:
@zhena gogolia:
Like so many shows/movies, it’s the music rights. Basically, production companies negotiate with record labels for how much it is going to cost to use the music they want in the show. This generally includes all current distribution channels. When a new medium opens up, music rights have to be repurchased, and record labels are evil, greedy monsters. Northern Exposure is about a radio station, so, lots of music. This is why WKRP was not on DVD for so long. When it finally did come out, they had to replace the music. There has been a reissue, but some of the music acts simply refused to allow their music to be on the DVD. They did manage to get 85% of the music, though.
This is a huge issue for low budget films, especially documentaries. There was a documentary about Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The filmmakers had a wonderful moment of the stagehands hanging out downstairs, with The Simpsons playing on a tiny TV in the corner while the opera went on upstairs. It had to be cut. Fox demanded $10,000 for 4.5 seconds of The Simpsons playing on a small TV in the background of a fairly non-commercial documentary.
lige
@FlyingToaster: The great irony is that Dark Angel was cancelled to make room for Firefly
zhena gogolia
@Feathers:
Wow. This reminds me of what my husband the art historian goes through to get permissions for images in a book.
LeftCoastYankee
Late to this, but there was a BBC America series called “Coppers”, which set in NYC right after the Civil War. The main character was an Irish (2nd generation?) former Union Captain who became a police detective. His forensics expert was a black “freedman” doctor who’d come north after the war.
Interesting period of upheaval, and it dealt pretty well (IIRC) with the issues of racism after the war, the anti-Catholic sentiments in NY, the hurdles women faced (IIRC it dealt with upper class, immigrant and freed black women characters challenges with society).
Only lasted 2 seasons. I have a soft spot for that period of history in NY (there were still farms on Manhattan), so I may have a more golden view of it. I should probably see if I can find it in streaming-land.
Scotius
@LeftCoastYankee:
I liked Copper. Great theme tune. It criminally underused Franka Potente though.
The Eccentric
Lots of memories rekindled. My list of ones I’d like to see again
Boomtown
Dollhouse
The Lone Gunmen
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (loved how all the arcs were tied up by the end, and they hinted at it turning into a version of The Wild, Wild West in the second season…alas, not to be)
Eleventh Hour (the Rufus Sewell remake of the British series that starred Sir Patrick Stewart, also short lived)
Flying Blind (early Fox series that starred a very young and adorable Tea Leone)
WaterGirl
@The Eccentric: Another Eleventh Hour fan!
BretH
Max Headroom
Bruuuuce
@Feathers: Music rights were also a major issue for Quantum Leap. There were some releases of the series where the original music was replaced by more generic material that they could afford (rather than the period music that was so important to the show), but it was a disaster. (The best example was the end of Season 2, where Al is dancing with his wife.) I had to buy a Region 2 (UK) set of DVDs to get the original music, sometime before they finally got it all straightened out here in the US and released the series with original tunes
WaterGirl
@Bruuuuce: Yeah, for shows that do the music right, it makes a huge difference.
The episodes of Life that I still have on my DVR are so much better than the episodes of Life that you can get on iTunes.
Mike in Oly
Thank you all so much for the reminder of so many great series gone too soon. Had forgotten about so many of them that I had loved when they aired. I am no longer capable of following a series in real time. I occasionally delve into one when I can stream it in binge sessions, but have lost my taste for waiting for a new episode of anything.
Ruckus
China Beach – too short
Firefly – very good I liked the concept that space travel was rather common so the cowboy stuff was OK.
Wonderfalls- very good, too short
Dead Like Me – good – too short
The West Wing – great series, just about right on episodes.
Matt McIrvin
@Bruuuuce: I think The Prisoner actually ran longer than initially intended–some of the more off-concept episodes were added to stretch out that run.
Matt McIrvin
@Feathers: Music rights were a huge problem for syndication and video releases of SCTV, because in its original run they’d completely neglected the issue and just stole any music they needed. There was a syndication package that mostly consisted of episodes from the earliest, pre-NBC seasons, which were frankly pretty weak by comparison with the later material, because those had the fewest music-rights problems.
Eventually Shout! Factory came out with a fairly comprehensive DVD set after absolutely heroic efforts to clear as much as they could, but even there, there are some episodes that were chopped up or rearranged to just delete some material they couldn’t make releasable.
LeftCoastYankee
@Scotius:
Agreed. She was pretty awesome… as she seems to be in everything.
MomSense
Firefly
Life
The Detectorists
Sanditon is not a great show but it ended unsatisfactorily and my mom has a wicked crush on Theo James. She really enjoyed watching it.
LeftCoastYankee
@The Eccentric:
I loved Flying Blind at the time. IIRC it was either before or after the painful “Herman’s Head”. I’m guessing that didn’t help.
RCKM
-Defiance
-Stargate Universe
-Dark Matter
-Star Trek (TOS)
-Revolution
All were canceled too early.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
The ending was horrible!
Love Mr. Pamuk, but he didn’t get to do much on Sanditon.
Craig
@Feathers: Sing Faster: The Stagehands Ring Cycle? Jon Else was cutting that at one of my first real jobs. Great movie about the SF Opera House.
Tehanu
@Richard Grant: omg, I forgot Agent Carter. Absolutely loved that show.
Jack Canuck
@JoyceH: I was coming here to say exactly this! That was a great show, so sad it got cut short!
jame
Square Pegs
Max Headroom
The Lone Gunmen
Agent Carter
Jack Canuck
@Just One More Canuck: A second vote for this one. Dead Like Me was great, wish there had been more of them.
zhena gogolia
@jame:
I loved Square Pegs. Sex and the City was not something I would have seen coming for SJP.
Matt McIrvin
(SCTV is also one of those shows where I’d love to have more seasons of its best era, namely the NBC 90-minute shows, but that wasn’t its entire run.)
Formica
Carnivalé. It follows a dust bowl, Great Depression era traveling carnival, with some magical realism thrown in. Unfortunately it ended after two seasons, just when the story was starting to reveal some of its cooler mysteries. Should be on HBO Max and/or Live, it was an HBO series.
Matt McIrvin
@jame: Max Headroom was one where the network was clearly trying as hard as it could to kill the show–it kept bouncing around to different graveyard time slots and getting preempted. Probably at least in part because the show constantly mocked network executives.
While it was on, it was the closest thing to a TV adaptation of a William Gibson novel before Hollywood belatedly discovered cyberpunk in the 1990s (Blade Runner had the look, granted). But the use of the Max Headroom character as an irritating commercial pitchman probably drove viewers away from the show, in which he was really a secondary character.
NotMax
Took time out for a five hour nap as was under the impression today’s M.C. would be about podcasts, so late entries.
Wholly agree with many of the above cited for being canceled too soon so shall not repeat those and will add VR5, Calucci’s Department, All Souls, Hot l Baltimore, Alias Smith and Jones and Strange Luck.
Switching gears, when it comes to worsts, here’s a smattering:
The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
The Chicago Teddy Bears
The Chevy Chase Show
Women in Prison
Turbo Teen
The Tammy Grimes Show
Supertrain
Hello, Larry
.
NotMax
@JDM
Somewhat in the same conceptual ecosystem as the titles you mention, you also might like Being Erica.
Kristine
@jame: Square Pegs was great.
SFBayAreaGal
@Another Scott: I loved Briscoe. It ended too soon.
SFBayAreaGal
@Delk: Yes, yes, yes. I loved the premise, the characters, the colors of this show.
SFBayAreaGal
@Richard Grant: Terminator: The Sara Conner Chronicles ended way too soon.
SFBayAreaGal
@Kristine: I agree 100%.
SFBayAreaGal
@Kristine: I agree 100%.
PJ
@Faithful Lurker: Lodge 49 was the best series (except for maybe Better Call Saul) of the last decade. It’s difficult to combine weird hermetic mythology, the decline of the middle class over the last 50 years, and characters who seem both idiosyncratic and real, but Lodge 49 pulled it off. I’m sorry we won’t see the last two seasons.
JAFD
@Tehanu: Another ‘gone too soon’ vote for My World and Welcome To It
JAFD
@Bruuuuce: Music rights – the song lyric quotes used as chapter epigraphs – are why George R.R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag is not in print.
One of the two best books about the 1960’s in America.
(OK, the other is James Carroll’s Prince of Peace)
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@Formica: Carnivale. Yes — could have been (should have been) one of the very best series ever put out by HBO. Great and unique story, fantastic cast, they just left us hanging at the end of season 2.
HBO did the same thing with the strange and compelling John From Cincinnati, just one season (even though it supposed to be the “consolation” to David Milch after they cancelled his great Deadwood show).
The OA — a well-done, quirky, hard-to-describe (travel between alternate universes? can death be cheated?) series that Netflix killed on a cliffhanger after only two seasons; this was Carnivale redux.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Peter: “Fuck” was the all-purpose adjective, verb, etc. on the show, but other wise the language and experience was Shakespearean.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@WaterGirl: It was a western, with miners instead of cowboys.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@geg6: I remember Wiseguy. It was supposed to be Ken Wahl’s show and Kevin Spacey as a supporting player stole the show, First time I had ever seen Kevin Spacey and he stole every scene he was in. It was clear immediately that he was going to be a star. Watching that show reminded me of when I had first seen Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. Instant star.
zeke
Stargate: Universe. Another show gone on a cliffhanger after two seasons.
JML
Such great stuff in this thread.
A few that ended too early:
Brooklyn South (Bochco knows how to do cop shows, and go back and look at that freakin’ cast!)
Dark Matter (needed one more season, but just an elite concept: entire crew of a spaceship wake up from stasis with no memory of who they are and the ship is under attack. The name themselves with numbers based on the order they woke up. Awesome)
My Own Worst Enemy (Christian Slater had a run of shows I liked and it felt like they never quite got enough time to find their audience/footing, and this was one of them)
Life (should have gotten a 3rd season, Shahi was awesome. did a great job of being 1 part procedural and 1 part long-form conspiracy)
No One of Consequence
@piratedan: The Black Company would be 8 kinds of awesome. Brust’s Vladamir Taltos could be a runaway smash, but casting would be critical, as would design.
I for one, would like the high-water-mark to be set, by HBO committing to the entirety of The Malazan Book of The Fallen. It would be the most difficult adaptation of any work, ever. But if they pulled it off, my god, we could binge on that for decades…
Peace,
NOoC
rachel
@RSA: I loved Farscape and was fit to be tied when I heard no Season 5 was planned.
Miss Bianca
@Peter: Last night D and I were deep in Season 3 of Deadwood – annual rewatch – so missed this thread in real time, and yes…I will say that Deadwood is up there with Firefly as all-time criminally premature cancelling. I so wanted to watch the adventures of Langriche’s theater company! And, of course, the threatened (real) conflagration of the town. We wuz all robbed.
I am going to be watching a one-season oddity called Grosse Pointe soon – my hometown! Found out about it at AV Club. Freaks and Geeks and Dollhouse also on the “coming soon” list, so one-season wonders are on deck for 2021.
And I will also chime in on the Wonderfalls lament and love – that’s another one that needed to go on longer
And since Briscoe County Jr has disappeared from the library stacks (that was one of my catalog picks while I worked there), I may have to buy the DVD set after all. Loved that one, too.
Miss Bianca
@Yutsano: And Paul Gross! I’m trying to find Due South, because I loved him so much in Slings and Arrows (another annual rewatch that is too short – only three seasons – but perfect.
@lige: AAAGH!! Dark Angel is another one I love and thought was a brutal shame that it only got two seasons. It is not quite on an annual rewatch schedule, but close. Damn…never thought I would feel so much love for a James Cameron production!
Michael Cain
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Once you get west of the Texas panhandle — the wrinkly bits that make up the western third of this map — prospectors and miners are much more representative than cowboys.
J_A
I am shocked, shocked, that no one seems to miss Awake, where Jason Issacs jumps through two realities, the green one where his wife died, and the yellow one where his son did. Amazing story, but too complicated for the general public.
The other show that was killed because the network didn’t believe people could think was Battlestar Galactica’s prequel Caprica. The story of the creation of the cylons is also a reflection on religion, and what it does people, as well as presenting and analyzing the idea what we do online describes us completely. That we are our avatars. The latter is totally prescient in these days of social credit and Facebook monetizing us.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Oh, man – Alias Smith and Jones is going back a long, long way! I remember that show!
JML
I’m annoyed that so many of Michael Ealy’s shows get cancelled so quickly: I liked Stumptown (a lot), Common Law, Almost Human, and Flashforward (a bit of a mess but a creative one) and none of them got a second season and all of them deserved it.
Nancy
@debbie:
Yes I do. I liked it and Firefly and Life and. . . perhaps that’s why shows get cancelled too soon.
Maybe I need to pretend I don’t like them?
Nancy
@Omnes Omnibus:
Loved these–and the actor is not just handsome but also gifted in non-verbal communication, body language and facial expression–talented eye candy in Rome.
Nancy
@Nancy: And Deep Space Nine, and Dollhouse, Briscoe County, and The Finder. So many that ended too soon while reality shows go on and on and on.
Sonoran
Santa Clarita Diet anyone?
Also, Pushing Daisies and Firefly.
Pinkpuppy
@WaterGirl: Absolutely. Terrier’s is probably the show I most regret the cancelation of. Donal Logue was just great in that.
A close competitor is ‘The OA’. Having Brit Marling in a production almost always means something interesting is happening. And ‘The OA’ was canceled after the second season had ended with a particularly surprising twist.
I’m a fellow fan of Life as well. And other ‘died too early’ shows I’d recommend are Awake, Journeyman, and both the American and British versions of Utopia.
narya
@debbie: Dead thread, but I do!! I am a complete and total John Sayles fan (and even got to meet him & Maggie Renzi once, verrrrry briefly).
StevEagle
@Just One More Canuck:
that sounds amazing. I was late to the Rob Lowe game, but I just loved him so much on Parks and Rec