10 Flop TV Shows That Made ONE Huge Mistake

Producing a successful TV show is incredibly difficult, requiring hundreds of talented artists and craftspeople to pool their skills together for many months at a time. 

The smash hits are few and far between because there are so many potential factors that can hurt a show's wider appeal, and yet, sometimes it's blindingly obvious why a series ended up being depressingly short-lived.

And that's absolutely the case with these 10 ill-fated TV shows, each of which didn't end up lasting more than two seasons, and many of which were cancelled after just a single batch of episodes.

Though they certainly had their fans and touted a ton of potential on paper, they all made one massive, unforgivable mistake which put them on the back foot from early on, and from which they were never able to recover.

From hiring the wrong actor for the job to airing episodes out of order, showing little regard for the source material, or just trying too damn hard to be the Next Big Thing, these shows doomed themselves from the jump with these creative miscalculations.

With a slightly different approach, things could've gone very differently for each of them...

Truly a show that most people thought was too big to fail, how could a Friends spin-off starring one of its most beloved characters possibly haemorrhage most of its viewership by the start of its second season?

The problem? Joey picked the worst character possible. Now to be clear, Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) is a great character in Friends, but literally the worst choice of all six main characters to lead their own show.

Joey is by far the least able to thrive on his own, given both his status as the show's bonafide "joke character" and how many of his finest moments in Friends were defined by his back-and-forth with Chandler (Matthew Perry).

Every other Friends lead would've had an easier time fronting their own series, and while Joey wasn't at all helped by its mediocre writing, Mr. Tribbiani simply wasn't built to exist in his own ecosystem away from his pals.

With its ratings firmly in the toilet by the end of season two, NBC cancelled Joey and the world largely forgot that it ever even happened.