Biggest Series Flops Of Legendary TV Creators

The history of television is littered with the corpses of failed series — programs that tanked due to low ratings, terrible content, schedule conflicts, or just plain old bad luck. Some of these failures have taken on second life as "how did this get made?" curios: Marvel's "Inhumans," "Viva Laughlin," "Pink Lady and Jeff," "Manimal," the ghastly reality series "The Swan," and "The Chevy Chase Show," for instance, all remembered for their spectacular flameouts and downfalls. The majority of TV flops, however, simply vanish from the public consciousness, remembered only by TV obsessives and a small but devoted cult of "bad TV" fans.

Other TV failures refuse to die because of the people who created them. Names like Bochco, Serling, Shonda Rhimes and JJ Abrams are responsible for some of the most beloved TV series of all time. How could the people who brought us "Cheers," "Happy Days," "Sex and the City" and  "All in the Family" do anything other than hit home runs, every time at the plate?

Believe it or not, it happens. A casual look at the resumes of the most successful TV producers of all time inevitably turn up a couple duds, typically long forgotten and only glimpsed during comprehensive career retrospectives — causing people to look away in uncomfortable disgust, as if a long-exiled relative had shown up drunk to Thanksgiving dinner. Emmy winners, TV pioneers, creators of some of the most celebrated series in history  — believe it or not, they've all made missteps. Below is but a sampling of such infamous flops, best left buried in the television graveyard.

Having scored back-to-back hits for ABC with "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice," the network was more than eager to have a new Shondaland production for its 2011 slate. The third time, however, would not be the charm.

"Off the Map" followed a group of seven doctors working (and frequently romancing each other) at a clinic in South America, and starred a pre-"Virgin River" Martin Henderson along with Bryan Fuller regular Caroline Dhavernas and "Grey's" alum Jason George. Rimes and Betsy Beers served as producers for the series, which was created by Rimes protégé Jenna Bans (who would go on to become the "Good Girls" showrunner).

Critics were not kind to the fledgling series, with the Hollywood Reporter's chief TV critic, Tim Goodman, labeling it "brutal" and Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker dismissing it as "'Grey's Anatomy' with flies." Ratings were initially modest — 7.57 million viewers helped the premiere win its time slot on January 12, 2011 — but audience numbers dropped off with each subsequent episode. By its 13^th episode on April 6, viewership had fallen to 3.80 million. ABC soon yanked "Off the Map" from its schedule, leaving it as a one-and-done series.

Garry Marshall has been associated with so many critical and audience favorites on TV — from "Make Room for Daddy" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" to "The Odd Couple," "Happy Days," and "Laverne & Shirley" — that it's almost impossible to conceive that he generated some flops. It's almost a miracle that he and writer-producer Thomas L. Miller were allowed to strike sitcom gold with "Happy Days," as just a few years prior they co-created "Me and the Chimp," a 1972 CBS comedy with Ted Bessell of "That Girl," who handled the "Me" part of the title. The chimp element came courtesy of Jackie, a trained great ape who played Buttons, a space program contender who came to live with Bessell and his family.

Most of the series' 13 episodes revolved around Bessell trying to convince his family (which included Kami Cotler of "The Waltons") to integrate a large, highly intelligent ape into their suburban life. Naturally, Bessell's heart was eventually won over by Buttons, and he even pushed back when the government came to reclaim him. Critical loathing of "Chimp" was unparalleled ("a low-water mark in western civilization," wrote a pair of reviewers), leading to its swift demise after a single season.

Emmy-nominated character actor Nancy Walker stole the limelight on a regular basis from her co-stars on two series in 1976 — she earned a wealth of laughs as Valerie Harper and Julie Kavner's acerbic mother on "Rhoda," and as Rock Hudson and Susan St. James' housekeeper on "McMillan and Wife" — so, it seemed only natural that Walker should earn her own series. That Norman Lear and Rod Parker served as co-creators of ABC's "The Nancy Walker Show" seemed to indicate that it would become a critical and audience favorite on par with their previous collaboration "Maude" (not to mention the long list of hits Lear had generated on his own). It was not to be: "The Nancy Walker Show" was canceled by midseason, delivering Lear a rare flop during a remarkably productive period in his television career.

The series, which found Walker's life as a high-powered talent agent upended by the retirement of her husband (William Daniels) from the Navy, had a solid cast — in addition to Walker and Daniels, James Cromwell co-starred as her son-in-law and TV vet William Schallert was a TV exec — and even featured one of TV's first openly gay regular characters in Ken Olfson's Terry, who shared Walker's apartment suite/office. What it didn't have was a viewership. 

Walker, seemingly unfazed by its failure, segued directly into "Blansky's Beauties," a "Happy Days" spin-off created in part by Garry Marshall; the series, which found Walker as "den mother" to a gaggle of Las Vegas showgirls, featured several past and future "Happy Days" and "Laverne & Shirley" actors (Roz Kelly, Scott Baio, Pat Morita), but also failed to make it past 13 episodes. Walker soon returned to "Rhoda," and a long run as a TV commercial spokesperson for Bounty paper towels.

Along with David Crane, Marta Kauffmann created a bona fide pop culture phenomenon in "Friends," a series which seems to cultivate new viewers with each passing year. The pair also oversaw such series as "Veronica's Closet" and "Dream On," while Kauffmann went solo for the Netflix favorite "Grace and Frankie." Lodged somewhere between all of these efforts was "Related," a comedy-drama for The WB created by "Sex and the City" writer Liz Tuccillo and executive produced by Kauffman. 

A talented quartet of actresses — Jennifer Esposito, Lizzy Caplan, Kiele Sanchez, and Laura Breckinridge — starred as sisters navigating life and love in Manhattan. The show veered from broad comedy (frequently handled by Caplan) to romance (Sanchez's on-off relationship with boyfriend Dan Futterman) and youth drama (anything involving Breckenridge), often within the same episode. But critics and viewers seemed to find the sisters' adventures mostly trying — the series ranks at 33% on Rotten Tomatoes — and it did not survive the WB's transition into The CW in 2006.

Tom Fontana's hard-hitting television work includes the HBO series "Oz" (which he created) and writing and/or producing "St. Elsewhere," "Homicide: Life in the Street" and "City on a Hill," among many others. A three-time Emmy winner and four-time Peabody Award winner, Fontana has enjoyed extraordinary success in the television field, along with a few misfires. A number of these landed on network TV between "Oz" and his 2012-2013 BBC America series "Copper."

In 2000, Fontana created "The Beat," a UPN police drama starring Mark Ruffalo and Derek Cecil as New York City police officers. Despite a wealth of talent behind the camera, including Fontana's "Homicide" collaborators Barry Levinson, Eric Overmyer, and Irene Burns, the show was axed after only six episodes. Four years later, he reunited with Levinson and "Homicide" writer James Yoshimura for "The Jury," a Fox legal drama which starred Billy Burke ("Twilight"), Anna Friel and Cote de Pablo as New York lawyers and a rotating cast of guest stars as a new set of jurors in each episode.

"The Jury" also collapsed due to low ratings after 10 episodes, but Fontana pushed on; with TV vets Charlie Corwin and Jim Juvoven, he created the NBC drama "The Philanthropist," with James Purefoy as a billionaire who uses his wealth to change people's lives. The series, which also starred Neve Campbell and the late Michael Kenneth Williams, earned a mixed response and fell off the NBC roster after only 8 episodes.

At first, it seemed as if ABC had high hopes for "The Associates" when it premiered in 1979. The comedy series about newly minted lawyers was produced by the John Walter Charles Company, a production entity formed by former creatives from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show": James L. Brooks, David Davis, Stan Daniels, and Ed. Weinberger. Their first effort was "Taxi," which was a sizable hit for ABC, and the network seemed to believe that "The Associates" would follow suit. A bright, talented cast led by a pre-fame Martin Short, Alley Mills ("The Wonder Years"), and Wilfred Hyde-White, and positive early reviews further bolstered their hopes.

The network paired "The Associates" with "Mork & Mindy" as a one-two counterpunch to CBS's domination of the Sunday night lineup with the debut of "Archie Bunker's Place." But the move proved disastrous: "Archie" easily overpowered both series, and ABC scrambled to save "Mork" by moving it to Thursday, but left "The Associates" in the Sunday night slot, which proved its undoing. Only nine episodes of "The Associates" were screened prior to its cancellation; adding insult to injury for the John Walter Charles Company was the series' performance during the 1979 award season, which saw it claim two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nods, including Best Musical/Comedy Series.

For all intents and purposes, "Miss Match" should have been a hit. The 2003 NBC series, created by Darren Star of "Sex and the City" fame, along with Jeff Rake ("Manifest"), enjoyed both positive word-of-mouth — Entertainment Weekly pronounced it one of the season's best new series — and critical praise (83% on Rotten Tomatoes). It also had an unimpeachable cast led by Alicia Silverstone, who earned a Golden Globe nomination as a lawyer turned match maker, and support from Lake Bell, David Conrad, and a very funny Ryan O'Neal as Silverstone's dad. The guest cast included such favorites as Bradley Cooper, Nathan Fillion, and Jenna Fischer. So why did "Miss Match" last only a single season?

The answer, most likely, was ratings. EW went from listing "Miss Match" as Best New Series to Don't Blink and You'll Miss It in less than two months after its premiere in late September. Ratings dropped precipitously over the course of just 10 episodes, and the one-two punch of its Friday night time slot and its network competition ("Joan of Arcadia") helped to polish it off by the 11^th episode, with six additional episodes going unaired. The television graveyard is filled with great series that couldn't go the distance, and "Miss Match" was one of them.