10 Hyped 2020 TV Shows ALREADY Cancelled

5. Alive

Essentially Elementary, but for Frankenstein, Alive was another attempt to resurrect a nineteenth-century literary classic by retooling it as a contemporary crime procedural.

Coming from executive producer Rob Doherty and writer Jason Tracey, both of whom had worked on Elementary, Alive hoped to pick up a lot of the modern Holmes series's devoted fanbase.

90s teen idol Ryan Phillippe was cast in the lead role as Mark Escher, a San Francisco homicide detective killed in the line of duty, but who returns six months later, haunted, moody, and seeking answers. Those answers would have led to Mad Men's Aaron Staton as Dr Victor Frankenstein, here reimagined as an eccentric scientist with a history that's equal parts cutting-edge genius and ethics violations. Not a massive change there, then.

A pilot was shot for Elementary's network CBS, directed by Westworld and Altered Carbon helmer Uta Briesewitz (also currently working on Amazon's Wheel Of Time TV series), with an eye on the series debuting in the 2019-20 season.

Test audiences did not respond strongly to the pilot, though, and its slot in CBS's lineup has instead been taken by EVIL: a supernatural procedural with Luke Cage's Mike Colter as a priest investigating paranormal phenomena.