10 Amazing TV Shows You've Probably Never Heard Of
8. Harper's Island (2009)
Seven years ago, the normally staid and conservative CBS premiered the slasher/mystery series Harper’s Island on a Thursday night with a double-episode blitz. The debut was a disaster: the second of the two episodes pulled in 2.5 million less viewers than the first.
Panicking, CBS chose cowardice over commitment - they held the third episode back for two weeks, thereby ruining the momentum of the show for those who had liked that premiere episode, and then shunted it to the Saturday night ratings death slot from the fourth episode onwards.
From that point on, it would have taken a miracle for Harper’s Island to catch on. CBS isn’t Fox, though - it allowed that first season to run its course before announcing cancellation. Which is handy: a self-contained beast, Harper’s Island told a single story over thirteen episodes, a post-Scream horror whodunnit with a surprisingly gruesome body count.
Brought to TV by, amongst others, Jeffrey Bell (the writer/director behind many of Angel’s most operatically malevolent episodes) Harper’s Island was a riot. irreverent and over-the-top when it wanted to be (each episode was titled after an onomatopoeic noise - Ka-Blam, Thwack, Gasp, etc) the show was deadly serious when it needed to be.
The mystery was well-constructed, with a logical premise, a dynamic, twisting narrative and a coherent, satisfying ending. But the unique selling point would prove to be the wired, engaging performances from a cast that look like they should either be on a beach shooting swimwear or on a CW show, making the most of some surprisingly complex, layered writing.
Most of said cast are horribly murdered: stabbed, shot, impaled, dismembered, beheaded and immolated. Harper’s Island wasn’t a show that played favourites or was afraid to get its hands dirty, which only added to its dubious charm. This wasn’t a generic network TV version of a slasher movie - this was a genuine, high risk, high octane bloodthirsty addition to the genre.
Harper’s Island never made it to a second season (god knows what it would have looked like), but the first is ahead of its time, and still highly watchable to this day.