10 Cancelled TV Shows That Made Obvious Mistakes
Why the hell was Blockbuster set in the present day?
The world of TV sure is a cruel one, and in the age of streaming where shows can be cancelled mere days after you've binged them, it feels like an especially tough landscape.
Many beloved shows are cancelled for reasons that are baffling or nebulous at best, where vague business red-tape or behind-the-scenes squabbling kills them off, but it's also fair to say that many cancelled shows got the chop for blindingly obvious reasons.
Whether these shows were beloved fan favourites or disappointing trainwrecks that never got going, each made a very obvious mistake - either creatively or business-wise - which categorically sealed their fate.
In some cases it's all down to fundamental problems with the show's format, presentation, and storytelling, while in others it's the result of network executives simply not giving the series a chance to find an audience.
It can be deeply frustrating for fans who see that the promise is there, but for one reason or another, these shows all ended up getting prematurely axed. With some not-impossible changes, though, things could've turned out quite different for these promising series...
10. Trying To Outsmart The Internet - Westworld
Westworld's first season was a major hit for HBO, building a committed audience of fans who loved to obsess over basically every aspect of the show's lore.
But after the intense fandom managed to basically predict most of the first season's big reveals, creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy went on the defensive for season two, even re-writing aspects of the plot after fans figured things out.
Hilariously, Nolan actually asked the vocal fan community to stop guessing the plot.
And for many, Nolan and Joy's attempts to outsmart the Internet signalled the show's creative downfall, resulting in the third and fourth seasons becoming increasingly reliant on convoluted and arguably nonsensical storytelling that fans couldn't predict.
Rather than embrace the ingenuity of the fandom and accept that the Internet will always win this game, they tried to one-up them, resulting in writing that left many fans unsatisfied.
The show's ratings had steadily declined season-upon-season, and the season four finale pulled in an embarrassingly low 391,000 viewers, compared to 2.24 million for the first season's finale.
Given both the show's massive production budget and Warner Bros.' desperate need to shed costs amid executive reshufflings, it was a no-brainer that Westworld would get the chop.
But had Nolan and Joy stuck the storytelling course and ignored the Internet, things could've gone very differently.