The new Kolchak the Night Stalker Didn’t hold a candle to McGavin, but it had promise.
John Doe Turns out they were making up most of the “stuff he knew”, but if they hadn’t made it just a cop show and continued with the “what the hell happened to this guy” theme, it could have done well.
Space: Above and Beyond. It was great. WTF happened?
Touching Evil. Really good. G-d hates me, so it was canceled.
Star Trek: Enterprise If they’d just let Ron Moore produce it…
Nikita Muhy-kull!
This is going back a while: “The Famous Teddy Z” (1989)
**Star Trek ** only had 3 years, the biggest crime in TV history. A big FU to the guy that canceled it.
Police Squad 1982 only 6 episode.
Jim
Arrested Development. I’m still in shock that they cancelled it. Can’t the network execs tell quality when they see it?
Futurama. The show had great potential.
Seconded! I loved that show. It was one of the only shows of the past 15 years that I’ve actually planned on watching each week.
Shortly after it was cancelled The Blair Witch 2 aired on SciFi (shoulda been Comedy Central IMO), and I sat through it just to get my Creegan fix.
Cool tagline too, “What didn’t kill him made him stranger.”
I think Brimstone was cancelled too early also. I always wanted to see how many seasons they could milk the show for, considering he was only after 13 souls and he averaged one “capture” per episode. Unfortunately, the show fell victim to poor writing and the trappings of network television sensitivity. Interesting characters with a neat concept; but it could have been so much better (and likely longer-lived) if they hadn’t had to coddle to prime time self-censoring.
Only one I can think of at the moment, but my prediction is that it will take no more than 3 more posts before someone mentions Firefly.
Oh, that Dude’s in Dante’s Seventh Circle.
Satan spat out Judas to chew on him. 
I have been enjoying repeats of “Wonderfalls” on LOGO. I really wish I would have seen this show the first time around.
“The Montefuscos” (1975)
Never had a chance to find its audience.
Jake 2.0, a modern Six Million Dollar Man, was really good and was one of my favorite shows for the few months it was on but it got cancelled after only about ten episodes.
I had quit watching it because my TV viewing habits had died by that point but I was disheartened to find out Joan of Arcadia was cancelled.
The entire Whedon oeuvre, especially *Firefly *and Angel. I love *Buffy *and consider it my favorite but it had its day in the sun and, I think, was cancelled more out of Gellar’s apathy (antipathy?) and Whedon’s full schedule than by UPN’s disinterest. The other two were crimes against geekanity.
Hah. Four. The funny thing is, I didn’t even see this sentence the first time around and I’m not even one of its more enthusiastic fans.
So close, yet wrong! Seems to be my modus operandi, as evidenced by my football picks each week 
Another one came to mind, Samurai Jack. The poor guy never found his way home.
Strange Luck should’ve gotten at least another season.
And Nightmare Cafe only got 6 episodes. sighs
Re John Doe: The creators said after the series was canceled that John had died in a boat accident and met God, and got all of God’s knowledge.
While I liked the show well enough, I’m kinda glad it got canceled before that little scenario got played out.
My picks for some gone too soon shows:
Twin Peaks
Tru Calling
Parker Lewis Can’t Lose
Wolf Lake
The Judy Garland Show
A vote here for American Gothic.
The Norman Lear TV show The Powers That Be had some hysterical moments and never found an audience. It ran 13 episodes, then was brought back the next season for 8 more which were far more conventional and lame than the first 13- they didn’t even resolve the cliffhanger plot from the first 13 episodes.
John Forsythe played straight man as a long term senator to Holland Taylor’s brilliant performance as his Lady MacBeth ice queen wife, Valerie Mahaffey as their neurotic needy daughter, David Hyde Pierce as their suicidal son-in-law (in one scene he’s reading Final Exit in bed), Eve Gordon as the senator’s mistress and Elizabeth Berridge as the maid who falls in love with the son-in-law. It had some brilliant comedy (in one episode the senator is accidentally shot by his son-in-law, so the wife leaks to the press that it was an assassination attempt so that his poll numbers will jump and he’ll get major press, and then as he’s still unconscious she realizes it’s only a fresh wound and decides [with his secretary/mistress helping] to “shoot him again in a more strategic place”- dark humor but it was played hysterically]).
The only thing the show is really remembered for is a piece of trivia: it was while watching the show that one of the producers of Frasier was struck by the resemblance of Pierce to Kelsey Grammar and suggested him for the role of Niles.
Thirteen episodes were made but only eight were shown. This show was edgy before being edgy was cool.
I’ll second Firefly, Wonderfalls, John Doe, Jake 2.0, Joan of Arcadia, Parker Lewis, Wolf Lake, and a few others here. And to them I will add:
Nowhere Man; I’m not sure it even ran a full season. Oh, and Bakersfield, P.D..
Damn my eyes. And my coding.
Gunsmoke. Yeah, I said it.
I thought the pilot was really good, but the subsequent episodes couldn’t sustain that level of weirdness.
I was talking about Strange Luck, incidentally.