10 TV Shows Cancelled Before Their Time

Based on the real professional women’s wrestling circuit Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, GLOW was an encouragingly diverse and female-forward show following the lives of the women involved throughout the gloriously neon 1980s. Despite some criticisms on accuracy from former GLOW wrestlers, critical response was otherwise overwhelmingly positive, and the show quickly became a cult favourite among Netflix’s ever-growing slate of originals.

For several years, GLOW seemed to be going strong, and was picked up for a fourth and final season in September 2019. By February 2020, filming had already begun, and the first episode of the season had been fully completed before the set got shut down thanks to the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. By October, it was announced that the green light for the fourth season had been reversed, as the wrestling themes of the show meant constant close contact between the actors put the team at increased risk. GLOW had been unceremoniously retired, and not only would the season never be completed, but what had already been filmed would never air.

For any show, this would be an immense shame, but for GLOW it hit harder, as the cast had publicly campaigned to the writing team prior to the fourth season for increased diversity representation in the writing room, and better handling of both actors and characters. According to those involved, these changes had been successfully implemented, and the entire team were eager to display the way the show had worked on itself and evolved.

In an ideal world, we would’ve gotten to see this development. However, Netflix deemed that delaying for safety until 2022 at the earliest was too long a gap, and so we will never get to. Thanks, corona!