Each year TV premiere weeks promise slogans like the hottest and biggest thing to hit primetime and you don't want to miss it, baiting us into thinking we're about to play witness to a revolution of some kind.
So, we begin tuning in each week to see the soap opera unfold, whether that is through laughs or blood”we start to get hooked. Then without warning, the show gets cancelled and so too goes our favourite reason to stay home. Some networks give more opportunity to program growth than others. FOX is notorious for putting the emphasis on the first couple of episodes to see if viewership warrants a third, but it's still the most watched network. Lately there has been more options for shows to distribute through online outlets like Netflix. Then there are shows like Nashville, which was cancelled last spring only to find new legs within the CMT Network, a typically non-scripted network with no ties to drama shows.
But, then there are shows that just seemingly aren't ever coming back, and why they were cancelled in the first place is still baffling.
Here are nine TV shows that really way too short lived.
The Black Donnellys
Ran for: 1 season (2007)
How did a show co-created by the great Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash) not succeed past its first year? The show was based on a real Irish family that emigrated to Ontario and although the original family had multiple casualties, this on-screen family escaped New York’s street ring of death on a weekly basis, somehow. It starred Olivia Wilde, who showed some serious acting chops following her stint on The O.C. This show smacked hard and warranted more of an inside look into organized crime and Wahlberg-esque upbringings. Here’s the first episode in case you forget what a solid pilot can look like.
