There was a 90’s pilot for a sci-fi series called Island City. It was about a dystopian world where, after a life-saving and life-extending DNA resequencing procedure is invented, the majority of humanity gets it. However, it devolves the majority of people into cavemen-like retro humans called Recessives and they end up destroying much of the world and turning it into a wasteland. Cities protected with force fields are constructed to protect the remaining humans from attacks and this is where they live in hopes of finding a cure. I thought it was an awesome premise and loved that pilot episode, but apparently it never caught on and no other episodes were produced.
After Frasier, Kelsey Grammar had a short lived comedy sketch show called simply “Kelsey Grammar Presents: The Sketch Show”. Sketches could be long like an SNL sketch or really short like a few seconds. I thought it was a revolutionary comedic premise but alas, again, everybody hated the shows I loved and it didn’t last beyond a season.
I worked on the toy & packaging for Inhumanoids when I worked at Hasbro in the late 80’s (created the logo, packaging, illustrations, etc…) I think one big reason there was only 1 season (13 eps) of the show is that Hasbro declined to continue and add to the toy line a second series of figures. (in fact there was going to be a second series, new monsters, vehicles for the figures, etc…) In 1988-1989 the powers that ran the company had the attitude that in the upcoming decade (1990’s) action figures would be all but replaced and kids would only be playing with electronic and computer games.
As long as we’re doing re-thinks…“The Tim Conway show”…1980. “The Tim Conway Show”…1970. “Turn-On” featuring Tim Conway (this is the famous show that for much of the US lasted to the second commercial before it was cancelled…1969. “Rango” staring Tim Conway (this was a comedy western)…1967. “Channing,” featuring Tim Conway…1963-64.
As long as we’re doing re-thinks…“The Tim Conway show”…1980. “The Tim Conway Show”…1970. “Turn-On” featuring Tim Conway (this is the famous show that for much of the US lasted to the second commercial before it was cancelled…1969. “Rango” staring Tim Conway (this was a comedy western)…1967. “Channing,” featuring Tim Conway…1963-64.
Correction: Tim Conway was merely the guest host for the first episode of Turn-On. Robert Culp and his wife were co-hosts for the 2nd, unaired, episode. Other than that, he really had nothing to do with the show.
Only one station seems to have pulled it after the first commercial break. Many didn’t even air it all. ABC put it on “hiatus” 2 days after airing.
That one must have been in Western Colorado because I was watching the show and they went to commercial after a skit about two guys being in bed together, and I went to the bathroom and when I came back, they were onto a totally different show.
a lot of mine were already listed so instead of +1-ing I will try to add others I didn’t see:
Lucy, The Daughter of the Devil - a great animated show about a regular girl who just happened to be Satan’s daughter. Featuring H Jon Benjamin as Satan, and Jesus was a DJ. Reaper - A kid was sold to the devil in some deal with his parents and was made to go around collecting souls that escaped hell. A fun little sit-com. Dr Katz - the first animated show by Lauren Bouchard. Dr Katz was a therapist to comedians who did bits from their sets as “therapy”
I remember a very short-lived show, perhaps it was just the ONE episode. IIRC four people go to various medical, and “other”, providers. The one that sticks in my head was a guy who goes to a clinic and winds up getting a colonic. At one point, he’s attempting to crawl away, still tethered to the hose that’s up his backside, spraying various surfaces as he does. Not not for the squeamish, just in bad taste. Ring a bell for anyone?
It was bought as a summer replacement, and a surprise hit. When NBC went back to the showrunners to ask about a second season, the sets had already been torn down, many of the stars and writers had moved on, etc.
To which I counter: The Green Hornet, which was based on the comic book and got supplanted (with a two-part cross-over episode) by the much more campy approach (the complete opposite of the comic books’ dark approach) of the Batman series. In addition to the gorgeous Wendi Wagner as Ms. Case, The Green Hornet also had the inimitable Bruce Lee as Kato and Herb Alpert doing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee on trumpet for the theme song.
I remember reading the first chapter of a retrospective of a series. It recalled that someone went to the bigwigs of a TV network and said, “What we need is something like The Night Stalker but more modern and more serious.”
That suggestion became FoxTV’s The X-Files.
Reminds me of a show my sister introduced me to, an early 1990’s Canadian series on late-nights called Forever Knight about an 800-year-old vampire named Nick Knight who is trying to redeem himself as a cop on the night shift in Toronto.
This reminds me of a show my mother got into called Early Edition. Looks like it ran for 4 seasons, so maybe it doesn’t count. A guy gets tomorrow’s paper and reads about some terrible trajedy; he has 24 hours to prevent it. But that lasted four seasons, so maybe it wasn’t cancelled early. I still thought it had a lot of juice left in it, though.
Dollhouse was great and Eliza Dushku had turned gorgeous after True Lies. I suspect the sci fi and geeky tech concepts were above a mainstream audience’s head, though. And, just as my wife and I were getting into the story arc behind the weird episodes, the cancellation was announced and the last few episodes were a disjointed rush to pile a whole season’s worth of pacing into a few hours.
My submission is
Raven
It just happened to take the time-slot left behind by the end of MacGyver and there was still a crew in Hawaii left over after Magnum PI was done. The ninja craze was heavy and a decade had passed since David Carradine walked away from Kung Fu, so this show was Jeffrey Meeks playing a former government spy type with ninja training who was in Hawaii trying to search for his long lost son while getting involved in odd mysteries and situations that require his combat skills or espionage training or government contacts to get him through the episode. I think there were some great elements and different story arcs going on and hints of a really complex background, but the character was becoming a bit too complex to contain.