I was going to suggest The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., but it was just one season.
It’s my belief that Basil dies at the end of Fawlty Towers[sup]*[/sup]. It’s the episode with the health inspector. Basil, after chasing Manuel’s pet rat all over the hotel, presents the inspector with the box of crackers and the rat is there happily chewing away. After a moment of disbelief, Manuel and Polly are dragging Basil’s body out to the lobby and Sybil says “oh, it’s raining again”. It’s even foreshadowed in an earlier episode when someone says Basil will drop stone dead if he doesn’t relax more. And really, isn’t that how Basil should die, just drag him out of the room and get on with lunch?
I originally typed that as “Fawlty Toewrs”; almost left it that way as an homage.
Various reasons why “Combat” was canceled after five series. They thought they could get the same results with a newer cheaper series “Garrison’s Guerrillas”. they figured with color tv’s becoming more popular, it was best to get a series where the first four seasons were in black and white into syndication ASAP, rumors of ABC being bought by ITT meant there were some obscure tax questions. I think Vic Morrow and co star Rick Jason getting pay raises from $3,500 to $10,000 a week would have made a reluctance for the money men to continue.
“Maverick” continued for four years but was basically dead after James Garner left after two seasons. Warner Brothers should have found a way to keep him, although Garner and series created Roy Higgins long complained about being underpaid.
The comedy series “Popular” was great the first season but a bit ragged the second and got cancelled. Did the WB tv network really have something better to replace it with?
Nitpick: The name of the show was Garrison’s Gorillas. It was a clone of The Dirty Dozen, and all of the men were convicts (except for the commanding officer).
Combat!, which I loved, had pretty much run its course after five years, and the WWII craze was dying out because of Vietnam anyway.
I always liked “The Invaders”. The first season had Vincent fighting the aliens alone, the second he had allies. In a third, there might have been allies inside the government.
The Vicar of Dibley went on for years but only at the rate of a couple of episodes per year, sometimes one, and sometimes a couple of years between episodes. All together there aren’t as many episodes as one full US season. So when I binge-watched it earlier this year, I came to the end far too soon.
A little show called Homefront ran for two seasons in the early 1990’s and was nominated for/won a couple Emmys. To this day, I’ve no idea why it was canceled.
Gilligan’s Island is one of the more famous ones here. The story is will known and easily google-able, but basically ti came down to a last-minute schedule squeeze between it and Gunsmoke.
The Smoking Room It only ran for two seasons and a Christmas Special. I really liked the character interplay, especially how the entire series takes place in only one room and the characters come in and out during the episode.
Party Down miraculously survived two seasons on a TV network that had no idea what it was doing.
For a while, HBO had the “Girls Curse” where any show directly following Girls (Enlightened, Looking, Togetherness) all had exactly two seasons.
Worthy of mention even though it lasted 6 seasons is Community which, give or take a Futurama, is probably the show that has had the most narrow scrapes with near death due to the gross incompetence of not one but two separate TV networks.
“The Riches”. It was a brilliant dark comedy about “Travellers” (Irish Roma) in the USA. Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver were f’ing brilliant. And the whole thing went down due to funding problems.
A crying shame.
Agree re: Carnivale. An extremely unsatisfying ending, with way too many loose ends remaining.
Has nobody said “Firefly” yet? Or did I miss it? If it’s not here by now then by Og the demographic has officially changed on the SDMB . . .
Another vote for Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. Funny show with two very attractive leads. Not sure if the writers could have kept it up for further seasons.
