4. Cavemen (ABC, 2007)
Whats It About? The Cavemen from the GEICO car insurance adverts struggle with being racially stereotyped as they try to live ordinary lives.
Why Is It So Ridiculous? For a start, its based on characters from a series of car insurance adverts. Though in the UK weve had a book based on a character from a car insurance advert so were on a similar slippery slope. But a joke that worked for a few short adverts will just not work for a whole sitcom. The only joke is that the titular Cavemen are treated like a minority group and are stereotyped as being primitive and stupid while theyre actually thoughtful and articulate. Its a stupid concept that was produced only because the car insurance adverts were popular without any thought given to how well it would hold up with a longer runtime. While Im here, Id like to beg comparethemarket.com to not try and make a sitcom about Aleksandr the Meerkat. It wont end well. Cavemen is proof of that.
What Happened To It? It was put on hiatus after seven episodes during the Writers Guild Of America strike and was cancelled before the strike ended with the six remaining episodes of its only season being unaired.