10 Genuinely Horrible TV Shows Based On Popular Movies

4. Serpico

There's one big glaring problem with Serpico as a television series. First of all, this came out in 1976, when the idea of creating a series about a rogue cop battling the corrupt police force in his city wasn't exactly novel. How many gritty crime dramas about unorthodox policemen did the 1970s have, anyway? So you've got oversaturation of the market to deal with. And on top of that, you don't have Al Pacino. The 1973 film Serpico features one of his greatest performances, and without him, the show is just going to be a pale imitation. Instead of an Al Pacino, an Academy Award winner and one of the greatest screen actors of his generation, they get David Birney, who is a skilled classically trained theater actor, but he's just not the same. No one would be able to watch the series without consciously or subconsciously comparing it to the film, and there's no way it can hold up to that. Serpico ran on NBC for 14 episodes, before being unceremoniously cancelled in January 1977.