10 TV Shows NOBODY Expected To Get Cancelled

The world of TV entertainment has always been perilous, but it's never felt more volatile or unpredictable than in the modern streaming era, where networks are still figuring out precisely what "value" actually is.

And so, it's distressingly common for shows to get abruptly cancelled out of nowhere, despite their apparent popularity, rave reviews, and how much of a "sure thing" they seemed on paper.

But sudden cancellations are hardly an entirely new phenomenon either - the decades of TV history are littered with shows that were unceremoniously culled long before their time for one reason or another.

It then falls to fans to try and make sense of the cancellation, as often the network in question never officially comment on the matter, leaving industry commentators and perhaps even those who worked on the show to come up with answers.

Nobody expected these 10 TV shows to get canned, then, each seemingly being too big, too good, or too profitable to fail, and yet that didn't stop them from being stunted mid-flow.

Perhaps a more nebulous behind-the-scenes matter was the cause, or industry shake-ups far beyond the control of anyone working on the show. Whatever the reason, we were all blindsided by these cancellations...

Let's kick things off with one of the most insane and unfortunate cancellation stories in TV history - the premature and wildly unnecessary demise of Angel.

Despite the Buffy spin-off maintaining impressively consistent ratings across its five seasons, the show was abruptly canned by The WB mid-way through the airing of its fifth and ultimately final season.

The reason for this? Creator Joss Whedon, fed up with his cast members turning down jobs while waiting for Angel to be renewed each season, asked Jordan Levin, WB's Head of Entertainment, to make an early decision on Angel's fate, feeling confident that it would be renewed due to the show's critical and ratings success.

But Levin, feeling pressured to answer, decided to cancel Angel, much to the shock of Whedon and the entire ensemble cast. 

As if the ambiguous conclusion of the show's fifth season didn't sting enough, Angel's head writer David Fury later "guaranteed" that if Whedon hadn't requested an early answer, it would've been renewed for season six.