The Best CANCELLED Shows Ever

So many shows get to see their way to a finale...or a second season...some of them good, others VERY, VERY BAD! Unfortunately, there are some shows that come and go that are remarkable and don't get the viewership they deserved and don't get to see their way to a finale...or a second season. To paraphrase Harvey Dent, "You either get cancelled a great series or live long enough to see yourself have a crappy finale." Here are some of the unsung gems of the past couple of years that I consider the BEST of cancelled show ever!

If I bitch about NBC on this blog, this cancelled series is the MAIN reason why, the one below this one is the second. "Journeyman" is the story about Dan Vasser (played by Kevin McKidd) a journalist who inexplicably has the ability to travel through time. It happens at inopportune moments. When he goes back he usually manages to set things in certain people's lives right. Accompanying him on these travels is his ex-girlfriend (who apparently died, but is later found to be a traveller like him) who imparts wisdom on him on how to go about their new circumstances. This show made MAJOR waves with me. It lasted for 13 episodes, each one of them digging deeper and deeper into the mythology...but NBC tagged this show after it's flagship "Heroes", and by then "Heroes" was well into the Hayden Panettiere cock sucking Extravaganza so fans unfortunately tuned out and missed this little marvel of a series. It was my generation's "Quantum Leap", and having grown up watching "Quantum Leap", I could say that this series was it's spirit successor.

Yeah, NBC has found it's way on my crap list twice and this one is inexcusable. "Awake"! "Awake" told the story of Police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) , who after suffering a car accident finds himself in two worlds One where his wife died but his son survived and another where his son died but his wife survived. He falls asleep in one and awake in the other. The two worlds related to each other in interesting ways that respond to each and shed clues on how he can solve cases in both worlds. This show was intriguing, amazing, well done and original and before it REALLY get going...it was cancelled. Thankfully, it lasted 13 episodes and the season finale did provide a satisfactory (albeit appropriately confusing) conclusion to the series. But I'd would have loved NOTHING more than to have seen a second season of this show!

The CW has always been a risky bit of business when it comes to TV. In it's early conception The CW appealed to primarily females in the teenie-bopper age...and unfortunately that hasn't changed and while they're appealing to men as well (with shows like "Supernatural" & "Arrow") the age-range is pretty much the same. Unfortunately, "Cult" was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too smart of The CW. To this day I will still say that "Cult" was the smartest show of 2013. It got deeper and deeper with each episode. The only fatal flaw is that it had a dream episode (ya know those episodes that take place in a character's mind while they struggle for life in the outside world...yeah those, those suck). "Cult" managed to weave in my 3 favorite passions (Television, Religion & Psychology) all into one meta-fictional show. DAMN I loved this series and I absolutely LOVE it's opening credits. This would have lived if it had been on FOX. But alas, "Cult" found it's way on the chopping block and we'll never get to know it's secrets...that is of course until I kidnap Rockne S. O'Bannon and compel him to finish the series...*coughs*, it's what Billy Grimm would do.

This upset me a great deal. While I agree with some point of Jeremy Jahns' review, I have to say that I absolutely loved this show. This show was building to something very interesting and laid down a heavy mythology involving time travel. It was true that it was a police procedural BUT with the added mythology of why and how these convicts found themselves in modern times with nary a clue on how they got there raised some serious questions. And the questions only got more serious when we reached the finale and found out what was behind Warden James' secret door. I can't tell you how frustrated I am that we'll never know how these men managed to be displaced in time.

Not the greatest show but certainly VERY entertaining and light-hearted in a serious way. "No Ordinary Family" is about an suburban family that suddenly get super powers after an airplane accident. While that may sound boring, they immediately embrace their abilities and use them very practically. This show brought back the fun and excitement of having super powers and the joy of doing right. Also this is one of the few shows where the teenagers didn't annoy me AT ALL. With the way the series ended, I was excited for a second season only to discover that there wouldn't be one. This show was a gem from start to finish. In a sense I wasn't surprised that this show was cancelled but I'm still sad that it happened.

This one is a little obscure but HBO's short lived "Carnivale'" series was my first solid-introduction to Clancy Brown (I knew him of course from "The Highlander" but was too young to remember his name). This was a FANTASTIC series, taking place during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and wove in fantasy and the mystical, while including themes of religion and historical legend. With the way the second season ended, it was almost a sure thing that this show would last, but unfortunately HBO deemed the show too expensive to continue. Creator Daniel Knauf is a comic book writer and I would hope one day he would continue this as a comic book (much like how Joss Whedon did with "Buffy" & "Angel") but alas...