Nowadays, any tv show that seems to get cancelled usually gets at least an article or two saying that Netflix may pick it up before deciding not to, or a sound bite from an actor stating that a movie to wrap things is quite plausible. These teases may have been promising for the three fans of The Event or The River, but such pipe dreams only make us wish that this fever for revitalizing shows existed a few years back.
Here are ten shows that got cut early that we wish could return:
10. Rubicon
Ah, Rubicon, the show AMC hopes you won’t remember, which is a shame. True, we are more than getting our conspiracy theory thrills with Showtime’s brilliant Homeland, but AMC’s only show thus far to make it past its first season offered plenty of intrigue as well. The show, which felt like a quiet blend of Damages and Alias, dove into the lives of analysts and conspiracy theories to the point where smoking men in suits actually met in large estates and talked about codes.
It had a great pseudo-1970s feel to it, and its grounded realism proved to make it feel more dangerous than any show on television. This wasn’t a story about in-your-face murders, but rather the shadowy coverups that left such little trace, you couldn’t help but wonder if similar plots are actually happening around us. The show’s pace was deliberate to the point where future seasons could have slowly chipped away at a large-scale network of conspiracy and political intrigue, but alas, its snail’s pace damned it into cancellation. It’s sad, but maybe the public wasn’t ready for a show whose title was derived from Julius Caesar’s historic march.
Rubicon is streaming on Amazon Prime Instant Video
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10 Comments
Very good list and I agree with most of them (the ones I have heard of anyway) especically Carnivale. Pity you didn’t add Odyssey 5 to the list too – thats the one cancellation that still hurts…
Party Down is another that prematurely ended, hilarious show with great characters.
Good list…totally agree with the Freaks and Geeks/Undeclared choice. One I would have had on my list is “Firefly”.
Hey, now, where’s Twin Peaks? That one was the most difficult cancellation to live through (the final episode really picked things up)!
I really wanted to put a lot of these down here, but I ruled out a few for various reasons: Firefly, Arrested Development, & Party Down got feature films to wrap them up (or will in the next year), Veronica Mars had lost its steam during the college years (and the proposed FBI fourth season would have either been an entirely different show, or tried to awkwardly weave back in all of its original characters), and Dollhouse ended up closing out its entire narrative, even if the latter half of the second season covered season-long arcs every two episodes.
Twin Peaks nearly made the cut, and though I certainly miss it and agree that it did pick up again towards the end, I also put it in the category of having a movie to wrap up (some) loose ends. Given the cyclical nature of the Lodges, the prequel film explored ideas that went past the closing events of the series. Though I would have loved to see the show continue — especially given some of the plots Lynch and Frost had discussed for it — in some ways, I love the way the finale closes the show.
I have to disagree with Jericho, especially with it being grounded in anything resembling realism. They didn’t do their research about how their 20-kiloton nukes/dirty bombs/whatever would have actually worked. The dialog was REALLY poorly-written, coming off as “the apocalypse by way of the Hallmark and Lifetime channels.” Those writing it had never been to the Midwest, thinking that Kansas towns could somehow be cut off by the demolition of a single bridge (which is even more ludicrous when the bad guys had humvees and the town is surrounded by farms). I’d also hope that those writers have had other geographical things explained to them, like the fact you can’t see the Rocky Mountains from ANYWHERE in Kansas, let alone a mushroom cloud over Denver. Then there was the bar of endless booze, the fact that all of these idiots should have frozen to death in the first winter, the conspiracy that made no sense whatsoever, etc.
If you want good post-apoc TV that should have had a better chance, watch Jeremiah. The latter half of the second season isn’t great because the head writer was told Showtime was canceling it and he had to compress two seasons of material into a half of one, but even those clunkers were better than Jericho.
No Firefly???? Really? Better revisit that list again.
GREAT job rightfully showcasing Harpers Island, Alex! The definition of a ridiculously under-rated show (at least in ratings anyway) that I consider one of the best Whodunnit murder mysteries in recent memory. There was just something great about Harpers with the whole secluded island, one by one kills every week.
and Better Off Ted, oh my god talk about the definition of under-rated comedy. I went in thinking it would be god awful but it was as good as Community and Arrested Development, great underdog series.
Awesome list. It contains dual sense of underrated and prematurely cancelled shows. I would like to add Reaper. There were immense possibilities in that shows.