It’s never a good feeling when your favorite TV show gets canceled, but it does happen to the best of them, unfortunately. In order to avoid the fan hate, sometimes the network will end a series abruptly instead of canceling it, but it’s hard to tell if that’s any better either! On that sad note, here are five shows that should have continued for many more seasons but met their ends long before their time.
Freaks and Geeks
You would think that a show with names like Seth Rogen and James Franco on the cast would not be canceled so easily, but it happened with Freaks and Geeks. The thing is, these famous actors were not famous at that point of time and were only just beginning their career with Freaks and Geeks. In spite of it showing promise of being an excellent series, NBC just could not find enough people to watch Freaks and Geeks back then and decided to pull the plug on the teenage drama/comedy.
The Following
An ex-FBI agent with severe personal issues takes a stand against a serial killer who is in jail because of him, but is still carrying on his dirty work, thanks to a loyal list of followers. Now that sounds like a plot anyone would love to watch and it was for three seasons, before being canceled in 2015. The reasons had a lot to do with the show’s risky decision to kill off one of the main characters, but there was more to it than just that and Netflix Guides explains the entire ‘what went wrong’ scenario perfectly.
Carnivàle
When Carnivàle premiered back in 2006, it saw very impressive ratings and people loved it. Unfortunately, the show was unable to maintain the same ratings after the first season and the $2 million+ per episode budget was just too much for HBO to produce without seeing enough ratings to justify that investment. The dark fantasy series lasted for two seasons, consisting of 24 highly praised episodes in total, and if you have not seen them yet, it’s definitely worth a watch.
Firefly
A western TV show set in space sounds interesting right from the outset and fans loved it. Unfortunately, that fan base wasn’t large enough for the powers that be to continue the series for more than just one season. Fan outrage for this decision was so profound that a movie sequel to the show named Serenity was released three years later in 2005 as fan service.
Arrested Development
One of the best comedy shows to ever hit TV, Arrested Development is basically about the lives of a highly dysfunctional family that used to be rich! Once you consider that the first, second and third seasons of the show were launched in 2003, 2006 and 2013 respectively, there’s hope that it might come back again in the future.
If this list did not cover your favorite show, then it’s probably because it’s a list of just five names. Incredible shows such as Hannibal were also canceled due to piracy, while plenty of new ones with potential having never found a footing. As 2018 approaches, let’s see if any new gem pops up on the radar soon.
