Just in the same way that good people die, sometimes good TV shows get cancelled. And just like people, sometimes those TV shows rise from the dead with the sole purpose of finding us and consuming our brains. In a good way. There are plenty of reasons a TV show can get cancelled. Whether it's poor ratings, financial problems, or bad reviews, shows are regularly taken off the air to make way for something else. Sometimes shows aren't cancelled because they were bad though, or even necessarily that unpopular. Maybe they just hadn't reached the right audience. Perhaps they were ahead of their time or just weren't a big hit in their home country. Maybe the network was just too shortsighted to see a cult classic in the making. Let's look at some shows that rose from the dead to live another day.
10. Futurama
As you probably know, Futurama was the brainchild of Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Although Fox were eager for Groening to create a new series, he actually had a pretty gruelling experience trying to get the show on the air. Fox were initially not happy with the show at all. They disapproved of the suicide booths, they didn't like Zoidberg and they thought Bender was too anti-social. However, after lengthy negotiations they relented and agreed to give Groening full creative control. The show ran for 4 seasons until 2003 when Fox decided to simply stop buying episodes, and let the show go out of production before the Autumn season. Needless to say Groening was unhappy: "The people at Fox didn't ever support the show and it wasn't to their taste and, in my opinion, they're out of their minds. But they don't like The Simpsons either. The idea of a TV show that they haven't gotten their greasy fingers all over creatively drives them nuts. That's why almost everything else is so lousy. We won the Emmy for best animated show and I didn't even get a begrudging phone call from anyone at Fox. That's a dark company that they can't even make a fake phone call." Two sad years passed without any new Futurama episodes until Comedy Central appeared on the scene and decided to buy the syndication rights to the existing episodes. As part of their deal they discussed the possibility of producing some new episodes. The result was 4 straight-to-DVD films released between 2007 and 2009, which were later split into 16 episodes. Comedy Central has since picked it up for a 6th and 7th season.
Created in a petri dish in an underground lab, I was originally designed by scientists to carry out high-profile assassinations for the CIA. Unfortunately, something went wrong and my only skill was writing list-based articles. So now I do that instead.
