15 TV Shows That Got Axed After The First Episode

While it’s all too common for a network to milk a successful show to death, commissioning a new series long after it should’ve been put to bed when a show looks like a complete failure, those at the top often hesitate to pull the plug. Here are 15 prime examples of TV shows that got axed after the first episode:

15. Breaking Boston (2014)

Mark Wahlberg fared better when it came to selling burgers on television. His other A&E project, Breaking Boston, tracked four young women striving to turn their lives around. Courtney hoped to enroll in beauty school, while Val was working toward college. The appeal was supposed to come from watching people make small, difficult changes, with friends nearby to help when things went wrong.

Just 311,000 viewers tuned in for the March 13, 2014 premiere. A&E cancelled the show before its second episode aired, leaving those stories little chance to build an audience. Later episodes eventually landed on Hulu, so the women’s lives did not disappear from view as quickly as the TV schedule might imply.

14. Osbournes Reloaded (2009)

Moving the Osbournes out of their home and onto a variety-show stage was a rather bold change of direction. Ozzy and Sharon, along with Jack and Kelly, swapped the MTV reality format for audience stunts and sketches. The family’s fondness for rude jokes was still there, now with a studio audience to egg them on.

FOX broadcast the premiere on March 31, 2009, following American Idol. Some local stations declined to air it, while others moved it to late-night slots due to its content. That’s a major problem for a new series before viewers have even had a chance to decide whether they like it.

Six episodes had been produced. Only the first one aired on FOX, and the network ultimately abandoned plans to show the remaining five.

13. Dot Comedy (2000)

Internet humor, broadcast on television with hosts cracking jokes about the clips. It’s easy to see why someone believed that idea would succeed. Dot Comedy debuted on ABC in December 2000, long before YouTube existed, with Randy and Jason Sklar co-hosting alongside Annabelle Gurwitch.

The program gathered online clips and animation for viewers who likely would never have come across them on a computer. Later shows like Tosh.0 would make this format familiar, but ABC gained no such benefit from this version. Its December 8 premiere also turned out to be its final broadcast on the network. Reruns of Two Guys and a Girl filled the empty slot.

12. Secret Talents of the Stars (2008)

George Takei performed a country music song. Clint Black gave stand-up comedy a try. CBS created an entire competition built on the hope that viewers would want to watch celebrities do something besides the work that made them famous. John O’Hurley served as host, with Debbie Reynolds among the judges and viewers at home deciding which acts would move on.

The premiere on April 8, 2008 attracted roughly 4.6 million viewers, a poor showing for its time slot. That same week, CBS canceled the show. The planned tournament never made it to a final, so its opening acts had no title to compete for.

11. Emily’s Reasons Why Not (2006)

ABC gave Heather Graham’s new sitcom a major promotional push, only to grant the series a single night on its schedule. Graham portrayed Emily Sanders, a successful editor of self-help books whose personal love life was a disaster. Her answer was to create a list: identify five reasons a relationship won’t work, and then leave.

That premise leaves room for an entertaining dating comedy. Much of the premiere focused on Emily’s mistaken assumption that a man who wouldn’t sleep with her had to be gay, when in fact he was a Mormon saving sex for marriage. Asking viewers to follow such a flimsy joke for half an hour is a lot to expect.

Following the January 9, 2006 broadcast, ABC put the rest on the shelf. Six episodes had already been filmed, so this was a completed batch of work being dropped after just one airing.

10. Co-Ed Fever (1979)

After Animal House became a hit, television networks began searching for a college comedy of their own. CBS developed Co-Ed Fever, which was set at a women’s college that had only recently begun admitting men. David Keith and Heather Thomas were among the students involved in the dorm-room mischief.

On February 4, 1979, CBS showed a special preview following Rocky, ahead of a planned Monday time slot. That move to a regular slot never happened. Even the viewers that Rocky brought in were not enough to keep the show on the schedule. If you missed the preview in the United States, there was no regular run to catch up with. The remaining episodes aired later in Canada.

9. Quarterlife (2007–2008)

Quarterlife had an audience before NBC touched it. Created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, it began online in 2007 as short episodes about young adults struggling with work and relationships. At the center was Dylan, an aspiring writer whose video blog said rather more about her friends than they wanted made public.

NBC turned the material into six hour-long episodes. The first aired on February 26, 2008, and drew roughly 3.1 million viewers. Within days, the network had removed it from the schedule.

You can still come across references to a six-episode television run, which sounds odd for a show on this list. The other five aired on Bravo after NBC’s cancellation. A short web episode and an hour of network drama make different demands on your time, and this move didn’t bring enough viewers along.

8. Lawless (1997)

FOX placed former NFL player Brian Bosworth on a motorcycle and gave him a fittingly tough name: John Lawless. The ex-special-forces operative worked as a private investigator in Miami, with help from his old friend Reggie, played by Glenn Plummer.

Reggie piloted a helicopter, which provided the show with another means of landing its heroes in trouble along the coast. It was an action-series premise you could understand in seconds. Holding on to viewers was more difficult. FOX cancelled Lawless following its March 22, 1997 premiere, leaving five of the six completed episodes unaired.

7. South of Sunset (1993)

Before CBS gave him his own detective show, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey had already been seen on Miami Vice. He portrayed Cody McMahon in South of Sunset, a one-time movie-studio security chief who launched a private investigation agency. His young partner, Ziggy Duane, was played by Aries Spears. The pitch offered Frey the opportunity to headline a series built on his relaxed screen presence.

CBS advertised the show during the World Series, but cancelled it after the October 27, 1993 premiere drew weak ratings. Coverage of the wildfires also pushed the debut out of its slot in Los Angeles.

Several of the unaired episodes eventually surfaced on VH1, a fitting venue for reaching fans eager to see an Eagles member act. That later airing can make the episode count hard to follow: CBS dropped the series after a single broadcast.

6. Swamp Thing (2019)

Swamp Thing requires a minor clarification at this point. DC Universe cancelled the series on June 6, 2019, just six days after it premiered and before the second episode had aired. All ten episodes of the season were still released, which makes this a show that was axed after its first episode rather than one with only a single episode available to watch.

Crystal Reed portrayed Abby Arcane, a researcher who went back to Louisiana to look into a deadly outbreak. Her work led her to cross paths with the scientist Alec Holland and the creature played by Derek Mears. The series embraced the horror elements of the comics, presenting diseased bodies and a swamp that was anything but safe to enter.

The warm reception from critics makes the early cancellation particularly frustrating. The rest of the episodes rolled out weekly through August 2019, even though viewers already knew a second season would not be happening.

5. Turn-On (1969)

It seems like a miracle that Turn-On ever made it to production, let alone to air in a prime-time slot on ABC. The comedic sketch show pushed the boundaries of its genre in almost every way. Visually, it was extremely stark, with no sets being used aside from a white backdrop. It also used disorienting, rapid cuts between scenes, some of which featured stop-motion animation or computer graphics.

In terms of audio, it made strange and distinctive use of a Moog synthesizer and completely lacked any laugh track, further highlighting the awkward nature of the humor, which centered around off-kilter one-line puns, with contentious issues such as homosexuality and birth control featuring prominently (this was in 1969).

A second show was never aired, but most affiliated networks had already stopped showing it during its first slot, cutting to alternate programming after the first ad break.

4. The Will (2005)

Image Source: IMDb

Tastelessness is not the exclusive preserve of scripted shows pushing the boundaries of mainstream taste. Indeed, if you simply conjure up the right scenario, all you have to do is point the camera in their direction, and even the most regular of people can start producing appalling behavior.

This seems to have been the thinking behind the reality/game show The Will, in which the family members and friends of a freshly departed, very wealthy man were to compete to be named the beneficiary of his will.

Luckily, the public proved to have more taste than the producers and, due to low ratings, the show was axed after the first episode.

3. Heil Honey I’m Home (1990)

The irony is something the British are renowned for doing well, but, in the case of Heil Honey I’m Home, they went overboard and then some.

The show was written and presented in a style designed to parody the cheesiness of American sitcoms from the 50s and 60s. At the same time, it sought to lampoon Nazism by detailing the domestic difficulties faced by fictionalized versions of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and their Jewish neighbors.

Though eight episodes were planned, only the pilot ever saw the light of day, and, other than its initial airing, it’s never been shown on TV again.

2. Who’s Your Daddy? (2005)

Who’s Your Daddy begs the question: do the people who conceive these shows live anywhere in the vague vicinity of the world inhabited by the rest of us? If so, how do they end up with such twisted moral machinery?

The program had a single, amoeba-simple, yet incredibly galling concept; the adopted woman would attempt to pick out their biological father from a line of impostors. As a form of entertainment. One episode was one too many.

1. You’re In the Picture (1961)

Image Source: IMDb

You’re In the Picture was a foray by the multi-talented comedian/musician/actor, Jackie Gleason, into the world of game show presenting. Unfortunately, the show’s format was bizarrely convoluted (contestants climbed into a frame, forming part of a picture, and then asked yes/no questions to try and ascertain what scene they were in), leading it to be panned by critics.

Though the show retained its slot, the concept was immediately dropped. The following week, Gleason used the airtime to broadcast a comedic, yet sincere apology for the farce that had preceded the week before. The apology was much better received than the show itself.

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