Favorite quickly cancelled television series

Studio 60 was way too preachy and unfocused. Graded on a West Wing curve, it deserved to be cancelled. There was a good show there somewhere, but it only came out a very small doses.

 

FUNNY, during their first pre-season season hype period, i expected 'studio 60' to be a way better dramedy than '30 Rock' was a sitcom. really expected that fey would be one and done and head back to 'snl'. big whiff there. :

 

Studio 60 had a shit-ton of problems, not least of which was Aaron Sorkin being Aaron Sorkin (and I say this as an avowed Sorkinite, though I refuse to see Moneyball). The show-within-a-show wasn't funny, undermining the credibility of Matthew Perry's character as a comedy savant who was supposed to save the show; Harriet Hayes was a bad caricature of Kristin Chenoweth, and an unrepentant harpy to boot, to say nothing of Sarah Paulson's utter lack of chemistry with Perry; and do I even need to mention Danny the creepy stalker? Oy. So much wasted potential.

 

I was just about to write the same thing. The sketches from the show-within-a-show were excruciating, which is a particularly bad problem when they are used as an example to show how brilliant and edgy the central characters are.

I quit watching network shows years ago, but this is one I was excited about. It was a big letdown.

 

Don't know if The Critic qualifies, but it was great.

 

They were about as strong as SNL sketches were during that few year span.

 

I still don't love Fey, but her acting got better very quickly. Plus, they were smart enough to recognize how good Baldwin was in the role and how good the Baldwin/Fey chemistry worked.

Even if he had something new to say, Sorkin basically exhausted doing a TV drama with that type of patter.

 

watching ellie with julia-louis dreyfus

 

A fantastic parody of/tribute to the Quinn Martin shows of the '60s and '70s, but more so to this long-forgotten Lee Marvin series from the late '50s. The theme music is also almost identical.

 

The Black Donnellys is the one that always comes to my mind when this kind of topic comes up. It was really well cast (Nice to meet you, Ms. Wilde) and I liked the arc the season took with the main character (not coincidentally named Michael, I think) not wanting to get involved in organized crime and being drawn in to take over a neighborhood.

I thought it might find a home on cable, but it never did.

Ditto to someone else's mention of Jericho.