10 TV Shows That Wasted Brilliant Concepts

There are few things worse than sitting down to a new TV show that really should be great, only to find its premise has been wasted and its potential squandered.

Such is the case with the following shows, all of which had the vital ingredients needed to be something truly great, but somehow found a way to lose sight of what they could have been, whether it was due to poor writing, behind-the-scenes clashes, or the terrible execution of key themes.

Making a show is hard work, there's no doubt about that, and coming up with a solid concept is a rarity afforded to few writers and filmmakers, but even so it's difficult to watch these shows as an outsider without thinking of a dozen ways they could have been saved from their failings.

With that in mind, from apocalyptic thrillers to polarising teen dramas and promising sci-fi epics, here are 10 TV shows that completely wasted their concepts. This article will contain some spoilers.

Running for four seasons between 2006 and 2010, Heroes had one of the sharpest quality declines in television history after its masterful first season, and is today only really remembered for how much potential it ruined, and how much it disappointed its fans.

The story of a group of ordinary people who gain supernatural abilities and grapple with their implications, the ensemble drama was both well cast and extremely rich in its mythology and unconventional superhero narrative.

Unfortunately - though the first season was such a rousing success - the second season was heavily shortened due to the 2007 Writers Guild strike, and its story suffered from a maddeningly slow pace and indulgent exposition from which the rest of the series never recovered.

After the second instalment, audience numbers for Heroes fell, critics lost interest, and the writers were never able to recapture the magic it once had.