10 TV Shows That Were Doomed From The Start
9. Smallville
One of the worst offenders, the creation of Smallville was predicated on the fact that there was a burning desire amongst casual Superman fans for a contemporary television show about his childhood in a tiny farming town in Kansas. Except this wasn't going to star Superboy
Determined to avoid clichés (you know, like the iconic name, the iconic costume and most of the character's iconic powers and abilities), Smallville's producers settled on the idea that the show would be gradually wending its way toward Clark Kent's arrival in Metropolis, and that he would slowly pick up the individual pieces of his future identity as Superman as the series progressed, including the ability to fly and the uniform itself.
Quite why anyone thought that a show about a young Superman in which they deliberately refused to feature any of the facets of the character that his fans actually enjoyed is a mystery. At any rate, the show lasted for ten years. Ten. Years. Ten years, in which lead actor Tom Welling gradually grew from a baby-faced twenty-four year old playing a teenager into a baby-faced thirty-four year old playing well, no one's really sure.
You see, the show clearly over-performed in the ratings, doing far better than its tissue-paper-thin core concept would deserve. The end of season four saw Clark Kent graduating high school, so the next six seasons, longer than many TV shows get in their entire lifetime, chronicled increasingly transparent attempts to bring actual Superman concepts to the small screen (spending a huge amount of time far away from Smallville with characters like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and the staff at the Daily Planet in Metropolis), in contravention of the shows crappy original premise.
Leaving aside whether Smallville was a good superhero show (it wasn't. It was low-budget, cheesy hackery without flair, drama or any degree of panache) or whether it was a good representation of Clark Kent/Superman on television (it wasn't. Thomas Welling is no good. Chop him up for firewood), Smallville is one of the worst conceived television shows in history.