# shows canceled first season- that should not have been canceled. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 10, 2018, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738 "2018-10-10T03:46:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/101 "2018-10-13T23:21:53Z")
**K-Ville** We were really disappointed when it ended. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/102 "2018-10-14T05:09:47Z")
> [@Misnomer](#): > > I think you and **Dr. Deth** both conflated _Forever_ with _New Amsterdam_. 🙂 _Forever_ is the medical one, where the immortal is a medical examiner. No, I’m thinking of _Forever_, the series with Ioan Gruffudd. Yes, he played a medical examiner. But the series was about how he went around solving crimes, which makes it a detective series not a medical series. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/103 "2018-10-14T12:34:10Z")
Forever and New Amsterdam were basically the same show, all the way down to having foreign leads whose most famous roles were military leaders. Both were trying to find “cures” for their conditions while solving crimes. Although New Amsterdam’s 'finding true love" arc was far inferior to Forever’s serial killer arc. These both were good shows. Maybe someday they’ll re-do the premise again. Call it Forever New Amsterdam were we find out Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s true love is Ioan Gruffudd’s serial killer. ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/104 "2018-10-14T12:37:38Z")
Does anyone remember _Probe_ from 1988? It only lasted 7 episodes despite being created and written by Isaac Asimov. Parker Stevenson was "an eccentric scientific prodigy"who solved mysteries with his dingbat secretary. He would have preferred to be a hermit, but got involved because of computers (AI) he created or worked on through a corporation he started/owned/worked for. I don’t recall. I’ve thought about starting a thread of shows like this: murdered by the execs–cause of death is deliberate scheduling against an unbeatable show in the same time slot. In the case of\* Probe\*, the _Cosby Show_. I was quite impressed by it, but as a young freshman at a state college, I couldn’t get access to a TV to watch it. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/105 "2018-10-14T16:17:00Z")
I don’t think I saw anyone mention Invasion. It came on the same night that Lost started. In many ways I enjoyed it much more than Lost. Wiliam Finchner is a good as always. It ended on a cliff hanger and I really wish I could have seen where it was going. > [@amarinth](#): > > Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a mess by the middle of its run and its cancellation was a mercy kill. (and I’ll gladly take that argument up in a different thread). > > - Enlisted was also doing really interesting things & was funny as hell. (“That lamp doesn’t even have a family!!”). It still had stories and ideas to tell if it had gone forward. Hated Studio 60 from the first episode. The show within the show was terribly unfunny and that caused the rest to fall apart. Enlisted was interesting. The pilot episode was so amazingly unrealistic as to how it depicted Army life that there was a veterans revolt on line against it. The creative team heard it and immediately jumped on the issue. The cast put out an apology and a promise to do better. They brought on veterans as consultants. The went directly to military and veterans pages and sites to court military viewers. After the first couple of episodes it turned into a pretty good show tackling some serious subject matter in a respectful manner and also maintained its humor. It wasn’t enough to get the ratings up. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/106 "2018-10-14T16:33:22Z")
Just thought of another series that didn’t last a season where the cancellation caught me totally by surprise was Alien Nation. That was a pretty good show that did a good job of translating the movie into TV. Maybe it isn’t Time Travel I need to stay away from. Maybe I need to stay away from all Sci Fi. ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/107 "2018-10-14T18:18:19Z")
I was never very much for prime-time type TV, but I liked the short lived series ‘Hyperion Bay’. not many likeable characters, but really interesting drama. > **[Hyperion Bay (TV Series 1998–1999) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166044/)** > > Hyperion Bay: Created by Joseph Dougherty. With Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dylan Neal, Sydney Penny, Christina Moore. A nerd returns to his hometown as a successful computer programmer and finds his high-school crush unhappily married to his high-school... ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/108 "2018-10-14T20:10:39Z")
> [@CelticKnot](#): > > Does anyone remember _Probe_ from 1988? It only lasted 7 episodes despite being created and written by Isaac Asimov. > Parker Stevenson was "an eccentric scientific prodigy"who solved mysteries with his dingbat secretary. He would have preferred to be a hermit, but got involved because of computers (AI) he created or worked on through a corporation he started/owned/worked for. I don’t recall. It was an interesting premise but poor in execution. Asimov developed the show which was clearly based on the concept of a modern Sherlock Holmes but he didn’t write any of the episodes and I don’t think he was directly involved in story development or production. It ended up being a murder-of-the-week procedural with the science aspect kind of tacked on, essentially like [_Numb3rs_](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433309/) and math, but with typical ‘Eighties production values and an obnoxious sidekick/secretary concocted to fill the Watson role but so vapid you spent every episode hoping she would fall into a hole. > [@CelticKnot](#): > > I’ve thought about starting a thread of shows like this: murdered by the execs–cause of death is deliberate scheduling against an unbeatable show in the same time slot. In the case of\* Probe\*, the _Cosby Show_. The classic example of this is _Max Headroom_, which technically had two (partial) seasons but because of frequent rescheduling and preempting never had a stable time slot for an audience to find and was shown out of order, probably because it went to such lengths to mock television executives and the kind of reality content that later became a production favorite. One show-within-a-show was _Missile Mike_, featuring the eponymous character firing guns, which is really just the American Heroes Channel. The show had unfortunately cheap production values and was filmed on low grade videotape so it looks execeptionally bad today, but it was ahead of its time in so many ways. I would love to see a modern remake of it but it would no longer be satire since so many of the trends it parodied have become mainstream television, and besides, they would probably replace Matt Frewer with a popular comedian and feature a car chase flying off of a mountain into the cargo hold of a C5 because Justin Lin would be hired to produce it. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2018, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/109 "2018-10-15T00:54:59Z")
Funny show, won a Emmy, etc: > **[Davis Rules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Rules)** > > Davis Rules is an American sitcom broadcast on ABC in 1991 and on CBS in 1992. The series was produced by Carsey-Werner Productions. > The series stars Randy Quaid as Dwight Davis, a widowed elementary school principal who is raising his three sons (Robbie, Charlie, and Ben) with the help of his wacky father Gunny Davis (Jonathan Winters). > Davis Rules was canceled by ABC after less than one season despite having premiered after Super Bowl XXV. ABC retained the rights to the series and planned t... ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/110 "2018-10-15T01:52:53Z")
One that just came to mind today: _The Middleman_. A delightful show about Wendy Watson, who is recruited by the Middleman to join the Organization Too Secret To Know (O2STK) to fight alien and supernatural menaces. The show parodied all sorts of TV shows and movies, and also had strange alien menaces (including an evil Boy Band from another planet, flying fish, and a cursed tuba on the Titanic. It ran, for some reason, on the Disney channel, and its tone was just plain wrong for the audience. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2018, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shows-canceled-first-season-that-should-not-have-been-canceled/822738/111 "2018-10-15T04:01:43Z")
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