What shows could and really should have been brilliant but ended up been flops?

AMKC

I will start with

The First.

It's a fairly recent show and it had the potential to be really good but it wasted far too much time just going on about family stuff. Yes developed the Character's and make them human and not just a cardboard cutout but not for practically for the whole 8 episodes. The sad part is even in the last two episodes there was still time to redeem it to make people want to watch it and see what could happen in season two but no they ballsed that up too.
They also done an "Enterprise" on the Characters in the last episode in relation to aging but I guess budget was tight to just get it finished.

The next show I will but down which I loved is

Space Above and Beyond.

Yes it's a long time since this show was out but I think its biggest failing was not the show itself but its budget and not finding the funding for a few more seasons. Such a pity as that cliffhanger was up there with BOBWs from Star Trek TNG.

So what shows can you think have that could and should have been brilliant or had more seasons but ended up getting cancelled for some reason?

frozenfrozen

The walking dead.

They still haven't realised it's a flop though

Thelonious Monk

Rome. The 2 seasons were up there with The Sopranos as amazing blockbuster TV, and it paved the way for big budget dramas like Game of Thrones. Was gutted that it wasn't renewed.

Westworld.

I know it is not really a flop as plenty of people like it but it is JOYLESS PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL CRAP.

Dexter. The worst ending of a once brilliant show since Lost.

McGinniesta

Brotherhood. The three season were good and I think it was a victim of the writers strike.

McGinniesta

Deleted User wrote: »

Dexter. The worst ending of a once brilliant show since Lost.

I gave up after a season and a half of Dexter. I found the whole premise of the show to be silly.

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Dexter. The worst ending of a once brilliant show since Lost.

Sons of Anarchy also veered off the cliff in latter seasons.

B.A._Baracus

A show called Terra Nova.
it's on Netflix and stars Stephen Lang (bad guy from Avatar) but only lasted one season.

It's actually pretty good. People from a future where the earth is the sh*ts and dying invent a way to travel back in time millions upon millions of years ago so humanity can have a chance at survival. So you got this weird aspect where the future of humanity will be living in the past.

Very big budgeted show. However it's problem was the budget. Not enough people watching to warrant a season 2 dispite pulling in a few million viewers.

If it sounds good to someone give it a look. A few plot twists and not everything is what it seems

Fuascailteoir

Deadwood. Was great and just pulled so stopped dead in its tracks

DaeryssaOne

Agree with Westworld above, a lot of shows start off brilliantly and then just fall apart as they're given the green light on more seasons. Westworld seasons 1 and 2 were excellent but the most recent series was like a completely different show and no fun to watch.

Stranger Things fell off a cliff in the last series, it was insulting rubbish

Dead to me actually infuriated me how stupid the second series was, there's basically about 5 people in this town and they're all just killing each other, incredibly stupid.

McGinniesta

Homeland. Season one was really good. Season two was good too but season three was appalling.

McGinniesta

McGinniesta wrote: »

Homeland. Season one was really good. Season two was good too but season three was appalling.

Ah, no..

Homeland was quality..

thefasteriwalk

Fuascailteoir wrote: »

Deadwood. Was great and just pulled so stopped dead in its tracks

Agreed. But I'm glad they eventually finished it with the film. I felt like I got some kind of closure.

McGinniesta

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah, no..

Homeland was quality..

It was good but as I said season three was awful. It did recover.

ziedth

While I enjoyed it and will watch the second Season I thought the Witcher could have been better...… Well Cast, acted and special effects but an absolute mile away from Game of Thrones (when it dipped in quality S5-7 as very little came near it at its best).

TexasTornado

Walking Dead. Really looked forward to watching it and then it just fell off a cliff.

sbsquarepants

Ray Donovan. First season was excellent, a tough guy doing tough guy stuff for money - who doesn't love that shít.

By the time he was single handedly defeating the russian mafia i was thinking "maybe they've stretched believability just a tad too far":mad:

Ekerot

The Dark Crystal - Age Of Resistance.

Great show, great visuals and great puppetry work. If you can get past the puppet themselves it's actually quite a dark show even if it was targeted at a younger demographic.

Hated it when I heard Netflix cancelled it last week.

El Gato De Negocios

Utopia - the British version.

Absolutely mind bending for two seasons and had me completely hooked only for it to be inexplicably pulled. I see an Americanised version was recently released on Prime. It can go suck my left nut.

Church on Tuesday

Prison Break.

Was kinda silly to begin with but then after the 2nd season it just went full retard.

the purple tin

Reaper.
Great demonic comedy with a good story and some excellent characters (a stroke of genius casting Leland Palmer as Satan).
Alas it was binned after the second series.

chrissb8

Game of thrones the last season. Had been dipping in quality in terms of quality, dialogues etc. all fell off after Charles Dance character (Tywin Lannister) was killed.

Then was just a mish mash of sub plots being hacked away and an overall arching main plot that was dumbed down with a dumb ending. Benioff and Weiss should forever be ashamed of how they wrapped the show up. Their laziness and "couldn't be a***d m8" attitude showed so clearly.

micks_address

Sense 8 on netflix is amazing... made by the Matrix brothers/sisters... amazing budget you could see the money on the screen... didnt get renewed after season 2 but they did manage to fund a concluding movie length episode which was at least something

Alf Veedersane

If Dexter had ended with season 4, how it's viewed now would be completely different.

Fell off a cliff in season 5 and then gravity multiplied for the rest apparently.

F34

Falling Skies never was I so pissed off with an ending

B.A._Baracus

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

A show called Terra Nova.
it's on Netflix and stars Stephen Lang (bad guy from Avatar) but only lasted one season.

It's actually pretty good. People from a future where the earth is the sh*ts and dying invent a way to travel back in time millions upon millions of years ago so humanity can have a chance at survival. So you got this weird aspect where the future of humanity will be living in the past.

Very big budgeted show. However it's problem was the budget. Not enough people watching to warrant a season 2 dispite pulling in a few million viewers.

If it sounds good to someone give it a look. A few plot twists and not everything is what it seems

Good call. Great idea but was made very badly with absolutely ridiculous plot holes.

Fuascailteoir

Fuascailteoir wrote: »

Deadwood. Was great and just pulled so stopped dead in its tracks

I'll never get over that one.

Fear the walking dead.

They could have done so much with a fresh look at the walking dead world and not tied to the comics.

First 2 seasons I enjoyed and now it's just a pile of boring, rehashed garbage

Sgt Hartman

Dickensian - An excellent BBC production which mingles a myriad of different Charles Dickens characters into one setting. A steady drop in ratings combined with the show's large budget ensured that it wasn't renewed for a second season sadly.
It can be found on Netflix at the moment. Definitely worth checking out if you like Charles Dickens stories.

Hannibal_Smith

Firefly. I loved it. Thought it was a fantastic idea and Sci fi wouldn't normally be my bag. But it was so witty.

But then again if it hadn't been cancelled would we have had Rick Castle and Jessica Pearson.

Fuascailteoir

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'll never get over that one.

I think I remember reading that they wanted the budget for other shows like boardwalk empire. Am not sure how true that was

Revenge - good idea and season 1 was very good but it went downhill rapidly after that.

Church on Tuesday

A lot of decent shows simply jump the shark.

Mad_maxx

Church on Tuesday wrote: »

Prison Break.

Was kinda silly to begin with but then after the 2nd season it just went full retard.

was actually amazing it stayed good for as long as it did , bar the sopranos , i never loved a show more than prison break for the first two series , then complete crap almost immedietely

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Revenge - good idea and season 1 was very good but it went downhill rapidly after that.

"here is now your perfect chance to get revenge and everything you wanted"
"but like, what if, I don't instead" x however many seasons

KungPao

A few good shouts for Dexter.

Although it was always clearly a rather cheap TV show rather than a big budget 'series', and certainy no Breaking Bad, it started so well. Very likeable bad guy/anti hero, some interesting characters and developments, but mon Dieu, it went into the ****ter. Barely watchable after the 4th season, which then tarnished what went before.

Cracking theme tune though.

thebestwords

The walking dead like others have mentioned for me. I really enjoyed the first few seasons, the farm scenario felt believable and it had some great characters like Dale/Shane/Hershel etc. After that it just seemed to loop itself season after season with increasingly worse dialogue and acting, the theme being some survival gang with a baddy leader trying to take the group down with half the episodes devoted to some moral pandering speeches.

It was really good but I haven't watched in years.

Homelander

Game of Thrones is the most obvious one - could've easily gone down as one of the absolute greats if they hadn't made such a total shambles of the last season in particular.

Dexter is another that I loved, but the last season was so bad it beggars belief, and the finale even more so. Even at it's worst, Dexter was always entertaining, but the last season wasn't even that, it was just atrocious.

The Walking Dead had a few decent seasons but got insultingly bad relatively early on and never recovered. The season where Neagan first appears - s7 maybe? - was shockingly bad, it was like the pitch was "Imagine Eastenders set in TWD universe".

And my real issue with the above 3 is that they were incredibly popular, so it wasn't a question of resources - they had access to the highest quality teams and script writers, so there is zero excuse.

It's good that there are shows that know when to quit, or rarer, see the quality through to the end. Breaking Bad and Sopranos are probably two excellent examples of shows that stuck the landing and know when enough was enough.

I see Homeland mentioned here, honestly I thought Homeland wavered between good and excellent over it's run, but to their credit, the later seasons were almost scarily on-point with current world events and therefore incredible, and relevant, viewing.

The last season was really, really good and loosely mirrored what was happening in real life.

Deadwood was another work of art that was cancelled prematurely but it got closure via an excellent movie relatively recently.

Another one of my all time favorites that saw it through with quality intact was Banshee, anyone who's watching the boys will recognise the main star as Homelander, Anthony Starr. 5 seasons of absolute carnage.

Gervais08

Hannibal_Smith wrote: »

Firefly. I loved it. Thought it was a fantastic idea and Sci fi wouldn't normally be my bag. But it was so witty.

But then again if it hadn't been cancelled would we have had Rick Castle and Jessica Pearson.

I loved Firefly!!!! But I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I love Castle so it’s worth the sacrifice !!!

Top shout on Dexter - when Debra started fancying her brother it was time to call it a day.

I assume Lost has been mentioned ?? So much promise and then utter shyte!

JohnnyFlash

There was a great show on C4 a few years back called Utopia. Brilliant story, looked amazing, weird, violent, extremely stylish.

C4 went and cancelled it after 2 seasons. Shower of bastards.

KungPao

The thing looking back too on Dexter is the characters became so irritating. The best one

Doakes died too soon

, and Debra was torture, Latino hat dude became unbearable, Latina police chief, god. And all the ****ty hook ups.

The legendary Jonathan Banks (Mike from BB/Victor Maitland's man servant) made a brief appearance but proabaly 180'd when he saw how shoddy the show was by then. Vince Gilligan had a better job for him anyway.

Gunmonkey

Maybe not everyones cup of tea, but I loved Heroes when it originally aired. Years before the glut of superhero stuff after Iron Man came out, first season was pretty slick and had some great parts to it. But then it went all "ohhhh evil corporations and conspiracies" and the wheels fell off (US writers strike didnt help much either).

pickarooney

Awake. Series with Jason Isaacs about a guy who has a car accident and ends up in a coma. He then switches between two alternative worlds whenever he falls asleep, one where his wife survived and the other where his fun survived. Nobody knew which was the real reality. After an excellent pilot it disappeared.

I think this is more suitable than naming the most successful shows in history that had a shoddy ending.

TheValeyard

Flash Forward.
It deserved another season

Jericho.
It deserved another two seasons

Picard.
Could have been brilliant. Just ended up silly.

Moghead

I thought the last season of Battlestar Galactica wasn't great, up to then it was brilliant.

Sawduck

Freaks and Geeks
American Vandal
Invasion

Suckit

The Good Guys.
It was a good few years ago, and was another show that Fox didn't give a proper chance to. I remember hoping it was going to be picked up by another network but it didn't happen.
It flopped because, well... Fox. They seem to give shows very little leeway in terms of growing an audience, and IIRC it had a big gap in the middle of the season and often had 2 week gaps. It was cheesy and corny, but I think it was supposed to be.
Bradley Whitford was excellent in it. The soundtrack was great too.

Church on Tuesday

Mad_maxx wrote: »

was actually amazing it stayed good for as long as it did , bar the sopranos , i never loved a show more than prison break for the first two series , then complete crap almost immedietely

Yeah it really only needed the two seasons but then it went totally daft.

Mr Meanor

Any show starting with the word 'Star'

bodhrandude

Carnivale made by HBO in 2003 and lasted two seasons. Based around the Great Depression in the thirties in dust bowl country, a travelling carnival making its way across the country, all its mad characters that was picked up on the way with their individual histories of good and evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carniv%C3%A0le