In other words, shows that for whatever reason were so bad, they didn’t last very long no matter how much the critics loved them (occasionally). You know - the kind of show that has one wondering, “Did anyone actually watch this before putting it on TV?”
Here are a few that come to mind:
Cop Rock (probably the best example)
Action (a short-lived series ca. 2000 about some TV producers. Perfectly dreadful)
The series based on the Geico cavemen that lasted 2 or 3 episodes
Surely My Mother the Car is on the list.
Wasn’t there a series called Ferris Bueller? A spinoff of the movie Ferris Bueller’s Days Off. The movie was pretty good, the series, not so much.
Dusty’s Travels, Bob Denver’s recovery vehicle following the end of Gilligan’s Island.
Our heroes are riding across the Wild West, heading towards a town. They approach a sign on the outskirts of town which reads “Whatever Town. Pop 127.”
Dusty says “Wow, I wonder how old Mom was?”
My dad says, “If they go into the saloon and see a moose head on the wall, and Dusty asks ‘Wow, I wonder how fast that moose was going when it hit the wall?’ we’re turning this off.”
We didn’t make it to the first commercial.
-Small Wonder
-Nearly Departed
-The Charmings
-She’s the Sheriff
-Jeniffer Slept Here
(I’m too tired to go over descriptions. Suffice to say: they sucked balls)
So, how are we defining “didn’t last long?” One episode? Six or fewer? Because My Mother, the Car lasted a full season, or 30 episodes, which are more episodes than series get today. She’s the Sheriff lasted two seasons, which means it was renewed once. And Small Wonder ran for four seasons, so somebody was watching it. As bad as those shows were, they apparently weren’t bad enough to be killed off immediately, which is what I think the OP was going for.
Turn-On - The queen mother of the subject at hand. It was ABC’s answer to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In…and didn’t even last an episode, due to some stations cutting it off halfway through (if not shorter) and others not showing it at all.
Manimal - Can’t believe I wasn’t beaten to this one in all of its eight episode and animal shapeshifting glory.
Supertrain - No, I couldn’t resist the irony of this one (nine episodes tops AND was the most expensive show ever produced at the time) with the thread title. 
Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats, a 1966–67 comedy Western starring Ann Sheridan, who was a really hot babe in the 1940s. Not a bad show, so far as Western sitcoms go; unfortunately, Sheridan was dying of lung cancer at the time and looked it. She was able to complete around half the show’s 26 episodes before finally succumbing to the disease, and they for some reason decided to stumble on without her.
I liked Jennifer Slept Here but probably because Ann Jillian was pretty smoking hot.
I’ll nominate:
The Jane Lynch vehicle, Angel from Hell which also starred the delightful Maggie Lawson. I tried to like it, I really did but it was simply unwatchable. CBS marketed the hell out of it and put it in a slot on Thursday right after Big Bang Theory (IIRC) and it still couldn’t hold an audience. No charm and fewer laughs. They shot a full season, but yanked it off the air after just 5 episodes.
The BBC had a great little comedy series from Steven Moffat called Coupling. I highly recommend it. NBC took a look and thought they could bring the same scripts into the US, edit them for time and content, and turn it into an American hit. It was a disaster. Nothing seemed to translate the same in the hands of American actors and broadcasters. NBC broadcast 4 episodes, left 6 in the can, and three more were never filmed.
Tons of others. Wikipedia, as always, has lists.
I’m also reminded of ***Space: 1999 ***(especially its second season, helmed by disgraced Star Trek producer Fred Freiberg), and Automan and The Highwayman, both in the 1980s.
I’d have tuned in to watch Ann Jillian peel potatoes! :o
I’ll see your Turn-On and raise you Heil, Honey, I’m Home! :eek:
Starring a pre-nose job Jennifer Aniston in the Jennifer Grey role. There was another series, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, that came out at the same time which was pretty much a ripoff of Ferris Bueller. It was ironically more successful than the other show it was imitating.
Behold Amanda’s by the Sea, America’s version of Fawlty Towers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLyS88_DB8
I had a similar reaction to The Charmings.
I liked the BBC original, and watched at least a couple eps of the American version. It was kind of fascinating to see how you can start from the same ingredients (using the original scripts, as you said) and still get something very different. I remember one of the characters who came off as blithely oblivious in the original seemed more deliberate and calculating in the remake, just because of the way the actress played it.
The thing is, weird ideas can work. Are any of these shows more off-the-rails than something like The Addams Family or I Dream of Jeannie? I don’t know why Laugh-In worked and Turn On didn’t; there’s so much more going on than just the premise. You can start with a weird idea and still make something great.
In the pre-nose job Jennifer Grey role.
Action was one of the funniest comedies of its decade, and a classic of dark satire. I’m not surprised it didn’t get ratings - it was extremely vicious about its targets - but it was hardly off the rails: it was exactly on the rails from the start.
Rusty’s Trail was pretty dire, especially since all the characters were imitations of the ones on Gilligan’s Island.
A strong contender for the winner must surely be 1990 British Sitcom Heil Honey I’m Home! Which has Adolph Hitler (yes that one) getting up to typical Sitcom rivalry high jinks with his Jewish neighbours.
Although it was conceived as a deliberate spoof of vapid American Sitcoms it was still too controversial and although a few episodes were made only one got broadcast.
TCMF-2L
Edited to add I have been ninjas by Terentii
You keep your strange fetishes to yourself! This is a family board.
Wow, Amanda’s was pretty awful. Bea Arthur as Basil could have worked, but you have to let her be as petty and nasty and simpering as he was. Instead, it seemed they tried to make her the sane one surrounded by the crazies.
Wasn’t there a show where the cast found out they were being cancelled while they were filming an episode and they aired the episode with the cast reacting?