2013 · 3 Seasons · NBC · Psychological Thriller
Hannibal is one of the most visually and psychologically daring shows ever made for broadcast television, pairing two career-defining performances with filmmaking that belongs in a museum. Its cancellation still stings, and the cult that formed around it has never really dispersed. If you can stomach the imagery, there's nothing else quite like it.
2007 · 2 Seasons · ABC · Comedy-Drama, Fantasy
Pushing Daisies is one of the most visually inventive and emotionally genuine shows network television has ever produced. Bryan Fuller built a candy-colored world around a premise that could have been grim and instead made it warm, funny, and deeply romantic. The 2007 writers' strike cut its first season short, and ABC cancelled it after just 22 episodes, but the show's reputation has only grown since. Its biggest limitation is that ABC never gave it enough time to fully explore its own potential, and the rushed ending reflects that. But what exists is a rare piece of television that committed fully to a singular vision and made something no other show has come close to replicating.
2003 · 2 Seasons · Showtime · Comedy-Drama, Fantasy
Dead Like Me took one of television's most clever premises, a young woman killed by a toilet seat from a deorbiting space station who becomes a grim reaper collecting souls at a temp agency of the dead, and built a show that was funny, morbid, and surprisingly thoughtful about what it means to care about your own life. Bryan Fuller departed early in the first season, and the show's quality wavered without his guiding hand, but the core cast and the strength of the concept carried it through two seasons of consistently entertaining television. It never fully became the show its pilot suggested it could be, but even at its most uneven, Dead Like Me offered something no other series was attempting.
2017 · 3 Seasons · Starz · Fantasy / Drama
American Gods starts as one of the most visually striking shows on television and gradually collapses under the weight of behind-the-scenes turmoil, leaving a brilliant first season stranded by diminishing returns.