The Cancelled Shows you Remember .....

[Starter Set]

Meh, i liked this show fine and i don't mind watching it sometimes when it's on TV.

It sounds to me so ridiculously disproportionate to try to remove everything about that show.

[TheInvisibleMan]

Meh, i liked this show fine and i don't mind watching it sometimes when it's on TV.

It sounds to me so ridiculously disproportionate to try to remove everything about that show.

not to me it doesn't

especially when Cosby was on the cover of people as "Americas Dad" and making NBC executives rich, while at the same time drugging and raping women

[SUPERECWFAN1]

You would have thought the Roseanne news would have ended after the shows removal. But if your living under a rock , ABC announced they have worked a deal with Roseanne to continue the show with a new name and focus. "The Conner's" will return next year sans Roseanne (odds are she died) and the cast are returning for 10 episodes. Its a unique spin at the wheel basically and not the 1st time networks have removed key cast members and revamped a series. In some cases it works as The Hogan Family , Archie Bunker's Place and Ellen showed us. But at times...its doomed to failure.


In 1979 , John Amos (Good Times) was working on a return to working alongside Norman Lear. The 2 men clashed over Good Times and the handling of James Evans as a character on that series. 3 Years later Amos was ready to work alongside Lear and was approached to do Mr. Dugen. Which itself had a big backstory involved. Anyhow the series was actually supposed to be the 7th season of Maude. In the last episodes of season #6 of Maude , Bea Arthur's character wins election to Congress and moves to Washington DC. Changing the entire direction of the series.

CBS was wanting to revamp Maude due to struggling ratings and decided that Maude & Walter would now get new supporting characters in DC. Bea Arthur however decided this was not a series she wanted to do and quit the show after the 6th season. CBS and Norman Lear however had plans that this premise would work and decided to reboot the entire concept with a new black congressman. In this case it became Mr. Dugen who was supposed to be played by John Amos.

The fall of 1978 had CBS promote the series hard and Lear had a special screening for some some black members of congress and ....it was a disaster. Lear and CBS got cold feet and yanked it from schedule even though 3 episodes were done. But the episodes have never aired. Amos would soon depart the project as Lear & CBS decided to reboot the entire project ...AGAIN. This time the show would not take place in Washington DC and instead becomes President of a very prestigious college called "Braddock University". Also the name of the show became ...Hanging In.




Bill Macy played the lead character of Louis Harper and the series only lasted 4 episodes. Macy himself played Walter on Maude ! So he ended up with this rebooted series. Also a number of these cast members were also a part of the Mr. Dugen pilot as well. So just a wild funny story to see unfold. But as I said the show only lasted 4 episodes and there would not be another reboot attempt of this concept.




NBC also had its unique funny history with a show that they seemingly within a season renamed and revamped in a comical way. Back in 1991 NBC and Disney did work on a series called "The Torkelsons" . The series was about Millicent Torkelson who was struggling as a now single mother to raise 5 children after her husband left. The series was famous for the young teenager Dorthy Jane Torkelson talking out her bedroom window to the man in the moon. Which would be a part of each episode that kids would remember.

Originally the series launched with the 5 children and Millicent taking in a border to help pay bills who lived in the basement named Wesley Hodges (William Schallert). The show struggled its 1st season and NBC came up with a unique idea. Drop a number of characters and veteran TV actor William Schallert in the 2nd season. Also...change the name . Dropping the Torkelson name of the series to..."Almost Home".





As the video tells us , the Torkelson family had their house lost. They also comically had them lose 2 children as well. The new series "Almost Home" has the family move to Seattle where Millicent would work as a live in nanny for the Morgan family. Brian Morgan had lost his wife and moved the Torkelson family in to help. It was now a very different Brady Bunch/Step by Step concept as a series where the 2 families had to grow used to each other.

Behind the scenes Disney seemed to lose a lot of interest in the series and handed the 2nd season to Touchstone Television. Of course the changes did little to help save the series overall with revamp and change of title and characters. After 2 years the series ended. However the Torkelson's lived on at Disney and would last on the cable channel in repeats til 1999. Also the series under Disney was just named "The Torkelsons" and dropped the Almost Home banner NBC used.

[Bunai]

Almost Human . . . FOX didn't deserve it and that show didn't deserve being treated like that.

[Knightmare10880]

NBC also had its unique funny history with a show that they seemingly within a season renamed and revamped in a comical way. Back in 1991 NBC and Disney did work on a series called "The Torkelsons" . The series was about Millicent Torkelson who was struggling as a now single mother to raise 5 children after her husband left. The series was famous for the young teenager Dorthy Jane Torkelson talking out her bedroom window to the man in the moon. Which would be a part of each episode that kids would remember.

Originally the series launched with the 5 children and Millicent taking in a border to help pay bills who lived in the basement named Wesley Hodges (William Schallert). The show struggled its 1st season and NBC came up with a unique idea. Drop a number of characters and veteran TV actor William Schallert in the 2nd season. Also...change the name . Dropping the Torkelson name of the series to..."Almost Home".





As the video tells us , the Torkelson family had their house lost. They also comically had them lose 2 children as well. The new series "Almost Home" has the family move to Seattle where Millicent would work as a live in nanny for the Morgan family. Brian Morgan had lost his wife and moved the Torkelson family in to help. It was now a very different Brady Bunch/Step by Step concept as a series where the 2 families had to grow used to each other.

Behind the scenes Disney seemed to lose a lot of interest in the series and handed the 2nd season to Touchstone Television. Of course the changes did little to help save the series overall with revamp and change of title and characters. After 2 years the series ended. However the Torkelson's lived on at Disney and would last on the cable channel in repeats til 1999. Also the series under Disney was just named "The Torkelsons" and dropped the Almost Home banner NBC used.

This was actually a favorite show of mine and I watched every episode of both seasons, although I do have to admit that I liked Season two better than Season 1. When I rewatched the series awhile back I had forgotten just how depressing the first season was. I really hate that it got canceled at the end of Season 2 as I think the show was finally starting to click on all cylinders by the end of Season 2. One of the things I really loved about Season 2 was the chemistry between Dorthy Jane(Olivia Burnette) and Molly Morgan(Brittany Murphy).

[The One and Only]

This was actually a favorite show of mine and I watched every episode of both seasons, although I do have to admit that I liked Season two better than Season 1. When I rewatched the series awhile back I had forgotten just how depressing the first season was. I really hate that it got canceled at the end of Season 2 as I think the show was finally starting to click on all cylinders by the end of Season 2. One of the things I really loved about Season 2 was the chemistry between Dorthy Jane(Olivia Burnette) and Molly Morgan(Brittany Murphy).

One thing I remember about the show was that it was always getting ragged on in the end credits of THE SIMPSONS by the voiceover guy when the The Simpsons wrapped up, and the Torkelsons was about to start on NBC. My brother also thought the show was major downer as well, and thought it deserved its verbal beatings.

[numberthirty]

Almost Human . . . FOX didn't deserve it and that show didn't deserve being treated like that.

Nope.

That said, I'm still pretty surprised that the lead up ever resulted in it being given the go ahead to start with.

[Knightmare10880]

One thing I remember about the show was that it was always getting ragged on in the end credits of THE SIMPSONS by the voiceover guy when the The Simpsons wrapped up, and the Torkelsons was about to start on NBC. My brother also thought the show was major downer as well, and thought it deserved its verbal beatings.

That's odd and this might be because it was 20+ years ago but I remember "The Torkelsons" airing before "the Simpsons" unless it was another earlier extra episode for the Simpsons and then "Almost Home" started on Sundays and then moved to Saturdays or was that the reverse?

[Divine Spark]

The 13 Ghost of Scooby Doo.

[The One and Only]

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.

Rather liked that show. While Fred and Velma were out of the picture. Flim Flam was a fun addition. Not too mention Vinceint Price himself voicing..... Vince. It was an interesting show. Also the debut episode with the townsfolk the gang ran into turning into werewolves was a bit scary I thought. Too bad, like with many a show on some kind of quest, it got canned before it could be wrapped up.

[Powerboy]

Meh, i liked this show fine and i don't mind watching it sometimes when it's on TV.

It sounds to me so ridiculously disproportionate to try to remove everything about that show.

I was never really a fan of the Cliff Huxtable show to begin with although I liked his older "The Bill Cosby Show" where he was a gym teacher. While I understand the desire to have everything he ever did removed from television, I also dislike pressure groups dictating that shows a lot of people would still like to watch be removed. I draw a distinction between the actor and the character.

[Nate Grey]

Rather liked that show. While Fred and Velma were out of the picture. Flim Flam was a fun addition. Not too mention Vinceint Price himself voicing..... Vince. It was an interesting show. Also the debut episode with the townsfolk the gang ran into turning into werewolves was a bit scary I thought. Too bad, like with many a show on some kind of quest, it got canned before it could be wrapped up.

I forgot Flim Flam even existed. I remember everything about that show BUT him. Interestingly, here's the fate of Flim Flam plus a dig at Scrappy.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

In cancelled shows I haven't really covered cartoons. In fact cartoons for the most part , unless they become HUGE hits get 1 season orders at times. In some cases they get a huge episode order and can run longer than 1 season. Sometimes a network doesn't want to invest that much into a cartoon and will cancel it within a season of airing on Saturday Morning TV. There has been a huge number of one and done shows. And some become classics from that. Of course in some cases they disappear quick.

Saturday morning TV became dedicated in the 1980's to a double prong move. Companies like Hasbro and Kenner etc would use shows like G.I. Joe , Transformers , Masters of the Universe and others to sell toy figures. The more successful a show became , the bigger the profits they'd reap off toys and lines would begin. Kenner literally became a million dollar company selling toy lines based off Star Wars. So the idea was always TV Show + Toys = $$$$.

In the 1990's this continued and as the old guard faded due to time and kids aging out , new toy lines was needed. Fox itself was happy to launch X-Men in 1993 and the next year launch Spider-Man. The toys soon followed. Over at CBS they themselves had an aging franchise that was itself a one time huge merchandise driver in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When that show launched in December 1987 , it kick started the whole TMNT empire that exploded into films and beyond. No one knew the impact that cartoon would have.

By 1995 however the toy line was slowly dying , the films were ending due to terrible ideas and merchandise had slowed. CBS needed a new hit to sell to fans as TMNT was deemed an old show (it had passed 100+ episodes at this point). Plus again the bigger the hit the bigger the toys and attention. CBS needed another hit to sell to fans and keep that up. But they decided to use the fading TMNT to prop that up and give it attention.





In 1991 , Image Comics would create mass hysteria in the comics industry. The 7 creators would walk out of Marvel intent on creating their own company and controlling their own characters. The result was within a couple years Image would have numerous properties from Spawn , Wildcasts and Youngblood that sold millions of copies at one point. The company had created such an interest that the properties soon would go into cartoons and movies. Spawn in particular became such a hit by Todd McFarlane it went to HBO for an adult animated series and movie in 1996.

Elsewhere Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.'s also attracted attention. Lee was a popular artist from the X-Men and once he did WildC.A.T.s things seemed to explode for him as well. CBS saw the popularity of the Spawn character from Image and realized they could have their next TMNT series. So they agreed to a 13 episode 1st season to try it out. Animation was handled by Nelvana who were rolling off success of Care Bears , Babar and Beetlejuice.

Of course a big problem soon presented itself as CBS felt that mainstream kids wouldn't buy into WildC.A.T.s without the TMNT brand bundled with it. So they decided that in order to sell that they would bundle a new block with TMNT , WC , and Skeleton Warriors (itself a new launch show in 1995). The "Action Zone" concept however fell flat as all 3 shows were totally different and didn't fit under this block and instead of single shows airing hyping it the Action Zone ad bumpers more or less mentioned TMNT and if you go on youtube they never mentioned the other 2 new shows at all.

To the shock of no one this failed as CBS seemed to not wanna promote WC outside the TMNT in case it may have gotten more popular. Also as a teenage kid then finding the show then was hard. Because again CBS had promoted it inside this block with TMNT as the main part. Within 13 episodes WildC.A.T.s was no more and CBS watched as TMNT limped to a finish 2 years later with a total of 193 episodes. CBS never really had that big hit after it and by 2000's licensed the programming block to Nick Jr to air shows.

The series in 2005 was actually released on DVD fully and its long out of print. You can find it on Amazon digitally now.

[Knightmare10880]

I have fond memories of the WildC.AT.s cartoon and was able to get a used copy of the series on DVD several years ago. I loved all the Action Zone shows, I grew up a huge TMNT fan and Skeleton Warriors is my all time favorite cartoon series and I've over the last several year collected pretty much any and every Skeleton Warriors related. Getting back to WildC.A.T.s the cartoon was fun it was very X-Men like and it helped get me into Image comics. As for the entire Action Zone concept, I remember it airing later in the morning trying to catch the attention of older kids(I myself was 12 going on 13 in 1993 when the Action Zone premiered) I remembered that sometime the local CBS affiliate would preempt the Action Block shows for special programming during the College Football Season I lived in South Georgia only about an hour from Tallahassee which is were the local CBS affiliate was located as was Florida State University and so they often did special local shows on home day games, which lead to me not getting to see the entire show until latter on in the season and I think that's one of the things that hurt the overall Action Zone experiment along with as you mentioned CBS rarely advertising the non-TMNT shows.

I found it odd that after WildC.A.T.s and Skeleton Warriors were both canceled that they still kept the Action Zone branding on TMNT and yet never added any other shows to the block, but that's the way things were going as cartoons slowly began to leave Saturday morning.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

For years networks have tried to take existing hit BBC shows and making them into successful network TV shows. In some cases it works as Sanford & Son was an adaption of Steptoe & Son. As well as All in the Family too became hits. So networks started to attempt at adapting various British shows and while some never made it past the planning stages (Kristie Ally's version of Keepin Up Appearances). But these 2 shows did air and failed very quickly. One adaption was tried for 3 different decades and made it to air actually in the 1980's and the 1990's.




Fawlty Towers is considered one of the greatest British comedies ever made. Airing on various streaming services and on home video since its run in 1970's , Fawlty Towers is a show that literally every episode is considered a classic. What is astounding is only 2 seasons of the show was ever made in Britain and it ran 12 episodes. Due to John Cleese and other actors schedules the series ended 39 years ago.

Given how successful and iconic this show is , American network executives wanted to make an adaption since 1978. The 1st attempt was a pilot called "Chateau Snavely" that starred Harvey Korman as Basil Fawlty and and Betty White as Sybil Fawlty. ABC rejected the series but that didn't stop them from working on it till. 5 years later they got one to air and it starred Bea Arthur in the title role. But ABC executives decided to make some changes to the Fawlty Towers adaption.





Bea Arthur had been waiting for a new project for TV after the success of Maude and a former writer (who wrote 6-7 episodes of the show) gave her tapes of Fawlty Towers. Arthur fell in love with the series and quickly signed on for ABC. But changes were made. Instead of the husband/wife dynamic , that was entirely dropped and as John Cleese joked he heard that Basil Fawlty would not exist in the American version. Instead , they merged his lines with Sybil's and Amanda Cartwright (who Arthur played) was not married , but had her daughter & son-in-law move to run this motel with her.

The only character not changed was Manuel who in the American version was called Aldo. But the show was so outright terrible that Norman Lear who created Maude for Arthur was shown an episode. As he told her , she wasn't playing a character at all from what he saw. Bea Arthur would later admit the show was not good and after 10 episodes aired it was cancelled in the spring of 1983. 3 episodes didn't air but would later in early 1990's air on A&E.


The next attempt at Fawlty Towers would take place nearly 20 years later as another network decided to try it. This time CBS and John Larroquette (Night Court) decided to adapt Fawlty Towers to American TV. To the credit of Larroquette he kept nearly the same dynamics with little changes made. Except it was set in California and the show was named "PAYNE". This series starred Larroquette as Royal Payne , JoBeth Williams as his wife Constance . Breeze O'Rourke as the maid was played by Julie Benz . And the bellhop was Mo was Rick Patella . The only real changes was that the Payne's had a happy sex life (unlike Basil and Sybil) and Breeze was happy to stay a virgin in this one.

John Cleese himself gave his blessing and told CBS if the show was picked up for a 2nd season he would appear as a recurring character and motel rival of Payne's. But alas CBS cancelled the series after 8 episodes (leaving a 9th un-aired). Since then no network has decided to try and adapt Fawlty Towers again but eventually it will likely come up. Due to the continued popularity of that classic series.


Another classic British show here was Men Behaving Badly. The original British show was itself was more of a counter to the "caring new men" era on TV in Britain at the time and the show itself reveled in its "beer , babes and guys" attitude. Which made the series a huge British hit. It was only natural an American version would get created due to that success and in 1996 it finally arrived on NBC .





The American version of Men Behaving Badly starred Rob Schneider as Jamie Coleman , Ron Eldard as Kevin Murphy and Justin Bateman as Sarah Stretten. The series as a whole started off with a lot of controversy at the time. Due to the racy humor involved and jokes. As some claimed it was the raciest network show on air beyond a cable series. But unlike the British audiences the series struggled and behind the scenes Ron Eldard and Justin Bateman clashed with Rob Schneider and producers about the series.

Sadly for Eldard he took this role leaving a certified hit series in ER where he played a paramedic in a supporting character role. But given a chance to headline his own series he went to do this. After a decent 1st season NBC sided with Schneider in the power struggle and made a huge mistake and killed the chemistry of the show. They wrote out both headliners in Eldard and Bateman. Replacing them with Ken Marino who played Steve and Jenica Bergere as Katie. The series got 13 episodes but only aired 6 before being cancelled.

EDIT TO ADD : In watching the 2nd episode of season #2 , the show took an interesting move. They decided to write out that Jamie's character dreamed Kevin and Sarah. In a comical spot he tells his friend Steve , "I dreamed I was sharing an apartment with Shep from ER and he was sleeping with Mallery from Family Ties !"

Interestingly , Ken Marino has went on to a decent TV/Film career to this day.