3. Robin Hood (BBC1, 2006 2009)
What Was The Show? A Saturday evening drama based on the legend of Robin Hood.
What Was The Stupid Decision? Killing Robin Hood.
How Did It Kill The Show? Its common nowadays for dramas to have gradually changing casts, allowing the creators to write out old characters and eventually bring in new ones to stop the show from becoming too stale and enabling it to continue for longer. Robin Hood is not a drama where this would work since the whole thing lives and dies with Robin Hood himself. The show drifted towards this in Series Two with the death of Maid Marian and the decision to replace her with an original character but its the Series Three finale that was really stupid. In that episode, the Sherriff Of Nottingham, his daughter Isabella , Guy Of Gisborne, Allan A Dale, and Robin Hood himself were all killed off. While the production team were putting the wheels in motion for a fourth series. This was due to Jonas Armstrong (who played Robin Hood) deciding to leave the show but rather than ending the series or putting it on hold to revisit later, the writers and producers decided to kill off the main character who is the focal point of both the show and the legends it is based on, yet still made plans to keep making new episodes. To paraphrase Nick Fury, since this was a stupid-ass decision, the BBC elected to ignore it and cancelled the series completely. This was also because of the steadily declining viewing figures, with the final episode getting a disappointing two million viewers in comparison to six million viewers at the start of the third series