11 TV shows that were canceled and then uncanceled
S.W.A.T., Jericho, The Killing, and more shows in the specific history of series that have had their cancelations reversed
Aux Features Matt Lanter
Devoted television viewers are all too familiar with the death knell of a cancelation. There are, generally, way more gone-too-soon series than long-running successful ones that wrap up on their own terms. And when that cancelation bell tolls, there’s typically no coming back, no matter how many hashtags are posted or how many daisies fans sent to the network.
In a handful of lucky instances, axed series are saved by new networks—think Brooklyn Nine-Nine moving from FOX to NBC, Nashville moving from ABC to CMT, Magnum P.I. switching from CBS to NBC, etc. Even rarer are the instances in which a network cancels a show and then reverses its own decision. Yet that’s what happened with S.W.A.T. on CBS. The procedural joins the ranks of the chosen few to be restored to its original network (even if it is just for one final season). Read on for more examples of TV’s Hail Mary save.
62 Comments
It’s pretty amazing just how badly Theo James screwed Sanditon over, openly saying he was leaving the show as a “Fuck you” to the fans because he loves chaos and unhappy endings.
Lucifer deserves a mention. Initially rescued by Netflix for an abbreviated fourth season, did well enough for a slightly longer fifth and final season, then Netflix was so impressed that they gave it a surprise renewal for one more, so they just chopped off the ten minute epilogue of what was supposed to be the series finale to give them something for Season 6 to even be about.
Not that I want to give them any ideas, but I think you can do a whole slideshow on the programs Netflix alone brought back from the dead — which conveniently enough another site has already done.
Man, AV Club really is mostly slide shows and listicles now, huh? Such a shame. Everything on the internet turns to shit eventually.
Yes, this sucks. Hate the slides. It is more clicks, more $ I guess. Why not one long page? Irritating…yet I am still here lol
Don’t forget; you’re here 5ever
I don’t know why Peacock doesn’t make an occasional “Timeless” movie the way they do Psych movies?!
Supposedly it cost a LOT of money to make Timeless.
Ummm maybe the most famous of all….Arrested Development
Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I think that the “most famous” example is probably Remington Steele. They canceled it, then uncanceled it during the summer, forcing Pierce Brosnan to turn down the offer to play James Bond. Then the “uncancellation” lasted for all of 6 really terrible episodes – by that time, Brosnan and Zimbalist had stopped pretending that they could stand each other in real life.
By far, the best/shittiest story about a cancelled/uncancelled show. They screwed Brosnan baaaaaad…
Arrested Development to me feels like a revival more than an un-cancellation. It came back seven years later on a different network/platform and with a different format.
FUTURAMA?
I would think the most famous of all is Star Trek.
Breaking In season 1 was a geek sitcom blast. Breaking In season 2 was a boring cookie-cutter workplace comedy without anything (including most of the season 1 cast and the security op of the week) that made season 1 so fun. They should’ve just let it die if that was the best they had.
Chuck and The Expanse.
Chuck seemed to get canceled and uncanceled just about every season. Sometimes it seemed like the partnership with Subway was the only thing keeping the lights on.
They really knew how to make product placement work though, I’m pretty sure I laughed anytime Morgan or Big Mike had to talk about a sandwich.
Its fans and the subway campaign WAS the only thing that kept it on the air for a few more seasons.
Wait. You expected AV CLUB to acknowledge The Expanse?Just, lol.Look at the rest of the examples on this slideshow. They don’t even watch THESE shows, let alone something of actual quality. This was just a quick and dirty Google search > slideshow clickbait. Five minutes to put together, tops.
I’m glad they were able to give the cast and crew of The Expanse an “ending” but the way they did it was so abrupt and jarring. Such a great show that deserved some more time.
The Expanse technically didn’t get uncancelled. It was picked up by a completely different platform.
I didn’t get a Community notice for this? (Some of us haven’t forgotten the Yahoo season)
The Expanse.
The Killing really flamed-out into complete nonsense during the third season, but I still really enjoyed the central performance of Mireille Enos. There just hadn’t been that many female characters who were such complete and utter disasters on US television at that point in time. I also like how fucking miserable Seattle looks in that show. Makes you feel like your TV is gonna grow mildew.
“an unfortunate tweet”*disgustingly vile and racistAlso, what about Taxi?
No Family Guy? That seems like a huge oversight.
Gotta be the most famous un-cancellation success story of all time. 21 seasons, one spin-off (Cleveland Show) and two other shows from Seth MacFarlane – American Dad (18 seasons) and Orville.
To be fair, American Dad exists specifically because of Family Guy’s cancellation – that’s why the early seasons were just “Family Guy but with more political jokes”, MacFarlane created it to replace Family Guy. But they un-cancelled Family Guy while American Dad was being developed, with MacFarlane switching almost all of his attention to Family Guy (outside of voices, I think he only really worked on the first episode or so of American Dad before that happened). Had Family Guy not been un-cancelled, it still would have existed but probably would have been much worse (since early American Dad is pretty bad).
Futurama too, lest we forget
and Futurama.
I’m still mad about “Timeless” being cancelled and I’m concerned about my beloved “Quantum Leap” revival.
An early example of this was when Taxi (which had a great cast, including Judd Hirsch, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Andy Kaufmann) was cancelled by ABC and then picked up immediately by NBC. The cast did a series of promos leading up to the premiere, and I’ll never forget how DeVito, in character, gave the tagline “Same time, better station.”
Family Guy and Futurama say hello.
Sanditon probably should have been cancelled after its first season. It didn’t really get much better in seasons 2 and 3. You can pretty much tell in season 1 when they run out of Jane Austen’s material because the quality of the writing and plotting gets so much worse. Theo James probably saw the writing on the wall and was right to jump ship when he did. The guy they brought in as the replacement romantic lead had all the charisma of a wet paper towel. The Killing had a quality third season, with a marked improvement in pacing and storytelling—it really was a mistake to stretch their first case out over two seasons. The fourth season is trash, though.
It takes a special kind of ego to go “You know what? I reckon I’m as good as Jane Austen. Can totally ghostwrite for her.”
Family Guy
No Futurama?
And Star Trek TOS. No third season and possibly the death of a franchise it weren’t for the fan write-in campaign (with a little nudge from Gene Roddenberry himself). So the world of Star Trek owes it’s existence to the fans.
Wynonna EarpHeroes
Heroes was never UNcancelled, tho. Zeroes Rescorned was more like Kring’s plan for s2: Mostly new cast, new adventures. Then they went and tied off the entire universe by THAT “reveal.” UGH.Maybe in another ten years NBC will revisit it, but withOUT Kring fkg things up.
I was a big fan of Jericho back in the day. Late 2006 was a wild and weird time for TV – Heroes, Jericho, Lost, Prison Break.
I’ll take “shows that started strong and then fell off a cliff” for 20, Alex.
Am I remembering wrong or didn’t Jericho return as a web only show, at least partially? In the before times of networks hosting their own programming on their sites for streaming.
No it had a web-only show that ran in tandem with the first season (as was all the rage circa 2006-07.I remember very little about it beyond, like most of the webisodes, it actually virtually nothing to do with the actual action of the series at hand.One series which notably had an webisode thing that actually mattered was Battlestar Galactica which came out during the year-long gap between Season 4 parts 1 and 2 (an in a small way actually gave away part of the resolution to the cliffhanger from Part 1).
Off the top of my head: Cagney & Lacey and The Life & Times of Tim.
Futurama anyone? Cancelled twice. Brought back twice. Let’s go HULU!
The Killing should have just been one season. Sometimes a show just needs to come in, tell the story it’s telling, and then get out. There’s nothing wrong with that, and sometimes a network needs to stop pushing a second season if it just isn’t there.
It was before the current era of “limited series” but I agree.
Futurama?Arrested Development?
Both moved to a completely different network or platform after Fox cancelled them. That’s not being uncancelled, that’s finding a new home.
I love a decent cop show but SWAT is just such full-on fellating of law enforcement, not to mention horrible contrived and cliched storylines that I can’t stomach watching it. I was shocked at how laughably bad it was. It makes shows like the new Magnum, PI and MacGyver look like art in comparison, and that’s saying something.I’d watch The Rookie instead (!) of this jingoistic crap.
The present allegations (or perhaps that should be the presently resurfacing not-really-new allegations) that the actual LAPD SWAT team has an inner circle that celebrates excessive force don’t make it an easier watch…
Thinking more about this, I’m surprised to see such a show helmed by Shawn Ryan. The grit and antiheroes and practically fractal moral ambiguity of The Shield seem long in the past…
This is the first I had heard that Surreal Estate was renewed after being cancelled. I’m pleased, its a fun show.
The omission of the original STAR TREK here is mind boggling. The most famous case of fan revolt staving off cancellation ever.
The Killing is underrated, especially for the chemistry between Enos and Kinnaman. It did have a few too many red herrings in the script but it was an enjoyable watch.
a fun one that was missed was the Fairly Odd Parents. The crew literally had 3 separate end of the series parties where they got the call that it was uncancelled for another season and to get back to work.
I vaguely remember really enjoying Jericho’s first season, but lamenting that they made a second. Sometimes the fans are just wrong…
As the 2023 Writers Guild Of America kicked off, um….whut? I’m guessing you mean the WGA strike? Which may have included Giz writers??The Conners – hoo boy, where to begin? I first knew it was coming back when I looked into those warm cobalt blues of John at Busch2, on July 6, 2016. He was fresh off Kong (and OUAT in Venice Beach w/Bruce?), and had no plans for another go at television, at the moment. In his eyes, I saw an old style box tv and on it was The Couch. I nearly blurted out, “You’re going back to tv.” I had to sit on that news until February, 2017, when he and Sara did a throwback skit to open his Kong promo/guest spot on her show, The Talk. When asked if he would ever consider a reboot of their sitcom, he immediately replied “In a heartbeat.” I could finally talk about it as Sara started making calls and got the ball rolling. Barr’s one demand was no position where she would have to butt heads with execs, again. This laid the groundwork for Sara to Exec Produce and later save the show when Barr’s children idiotically stopped scrubbing her tweets and gave her social media back to her. Nowadays, we just have to deal with her qultists and alleged “die hard fans” who still have no idea why she’s gone, and where are the kids, and 108 million other things that have changed since her departure, refusing to recognize they fully admitted ON SCREEN that the old series/Any season with her was her UNRELIABLE NARRATOR POV BOOK. oh, and that includes the trolls who can’t let go of the series ending in the 1990s and hate the new show and everyone aged thirty years. et cetera, ad nauseum.
(eg: Dan’s dentures are the new Dan’s wig, now. @_@ ).SouthLAnd – Axed by NBC while filming s2, it sat on the shelf for a year before TNT was allowed to buy it and air the second season of six now completed episodes. It was another year before TNT greenlit a third season of ten episodes. Repeat for seasons four and five, which had won numerous awards, including several GLAAD awards for Michael Cudlitz for his portrayal of closeted cop/drug abuser Sgt. John Cooper. He didn’t wait for the potential sixth season greenlight and jumped into The Walking Dead as Sgt. Abraham, bringing new life to that show.Babylon 5 had a similar situation, but TNT hesitated on renewing it for a second season and later, a fifth season. Their hesitancy on s5 caused J.Michael Straczinsky to push through his plots for s5 and left him drawing out the remaining plots to pad out the final fifth season. At least we got a follow up series, which was axed after one season, and now an animated movie reuniting the surviving actors. (I can only guess IF Mira knew about it before she passed, but her health was too far gone to return, even for a voice role.)
Others have mentioned a lot of omitted shows from this list already, but they bear repeating, considering the attention a lot of them got. It just weird that you wouldn’t mention these.Community, Arrested Development, Family Guy, Chuck, Lucifer, The Expanse.I’ve read up on the first 4, but I think the latter 2 had more public fan involvement due to social media. Correct me if I’m wrong, though!I think recently Lucifer and The Expanse can be said to have had significant fan action regarding their cancellations and subsequent renewals. Their social media campaigns were plenty large and possible revivals were especially welcomed and hoped for, considering that both shows had just finished their (arguably) best seasons.
Surreal Estate only carried on Scyfy. The show is Canadian-created and Canadian-produced by CTV Sci-Fi (formerly SPACE (The Imagination Station)). Please list the facts properly so credit is given where credit is due.