2002 · 1 Season · FOX · Sci-Fi, Western, Drama
Firefly is the gold standard for cancelled-too-soon television, a space western that packed more world-building, character development, and pure charm into 14 episodes than most shows manage across entire runs.
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.
2010 · 1 Season · FX · Crime Drama, Comedy-Drama
Terriers is one of the best single seasons of television ever produced, a sun-bleached neo-noir about two unlicensed private investigators in Ocean Beach, California, that combined sharp mystery plotting with a buddy comedy chemistry rarely seen on screen. Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James gave career-best performances as Hank and Britt, and Ted Griffin's writing threaded an ambitious season-long conspiracy through episodic cases without ever losing sight of the characters at its center. FX barely promoted it, the name told potential viewers nothing about the show, and it was cancelled after 13 episodes. Its final scene is one of the great endings in television, and the series that precedes it earns every second of that moment.
2011 · 3 Seasons · ABC · Comedy
Happy Endings is one of the best-written ensemble comedies of the 2010s and one of ABC's biggest scheduling casualties. Its six-person friend group has the chemistry of a cast that's been working together for a decade despite only getting three seasons, the joke density is among the highest on network television, and the show's rapid-fire style rewards rewatching in a way that few comedies do. ABC never gave it a fair shot with consistent scheduling, and its cancellation after three seasons remains one of the most frequently cited examples of a network fumbling a great show. What exists is excellent. There just isn't enough of it.