TV Shows That Were Canceled Before They Aired A Single Episode

Talk about bad timing. This was a midseason replacement on CBS's Saturday morning schedule. A comic sci-fi adventure involving kids, pets, and robots in space, this Marvel series was going to hit the air in February 1986, timed to capitalize on the space fever sweeping America with the launch of the Challenger space shuttle, the first time a civilian would travel into space. The whole project was suggested to Marvel by the government's Young Astronaut Program, a science and aerospace advocacy organization designed to get kids excited about the space program. The show had been delayed to February because nobody at Marvel, the YAC, or CBS could agree on the tone or format of the show. But they finally got one together ... and then the Challenger exploded shortly after launch on January 28, 1986. Everyone on board was killed, including the civilian, a teacher named Christa McAuliffe. CBS opted not to air The Young Astronauts at all.

Fox took years and tens of millions of dollars to develop this big-budget costume drama, essentially a claim for its own Game of Thrones, and then never even aired it. An elaborate drama about power struggles in ancient Egypt, Hieroglyph was created by Pacific Rim writer Travis Beacham and concerned a thief (Max Brown) who is released from prison to serve the mysterious Pharoah. (Like a certain other HBO show, there was a lot of sex, intrigue, politics, and sorcery.) It was given a 13-episode order in October 2013. Less than a year later, Fox changed its mind about debuting Hieroglyph in 2015. The show just wasn't coming together, and its cancellation also followed the exit of Kevin Reilly, the Fox programming boss who had approved the show and its massive budget.

At this point, there's been a reality show about nearly every possible line of work—Duck Dynasty is about a family that makes duck calls, for example. It's not too crazy to think that there would be a reality show set in a funeral home. And there almost was. In 2014, Lifetime produced and began airing ads touting Good Grief, a show following around the owners of Johnson Family Mortuary of Fort Worth, Texas. The show was supposed to debut that August, but Lifetime killed it in late July when the Johnson Family Mortuary came under investigation. The owner of the building that housed the funeral home was attempting to evict the mortuary's operators for failure to pay their rent, and in doing so, authorities discovered eight bodies in a state of mummification or decomposition—in other words they weren't embalmed or being properly stored, as should be done at a funeral home. (Other problems included an insect infestation and bodily fluids from the deceased pooling on the floor.) After all that went down, Lifetime decided Good Grief was a bad idea.

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason has created several TV shows, all in a sub-genre she virtually created: acerbic, satirical comedies, set in the South. Among her projects: Designing Women, Evening Shade, and 12 Miles of Bad Road. In 2007, Bloodworth-Thomason sold that last one to HBO, which promised to make 10 episodes about a wealthy Texas real estate baroness (Lily Tomlin) caught up in the struggles of her not-as-sharp family members and business associates. (Other members of the all-star cast: Gary Cole of Office Space, Kim Dickens of Deadwood, comedian Ron White, and Eliza Coupe of Happy Endings.) Six episodes of the 10-episode season were shot during the course of the 2007-2008 season ... but then the lengthy Writers Guild of America strike completely shut down production. When it was resolved, HBO opted to not only pass on the remaining four episodes but to not broadcast the episodes that it had already filmed and paid $25 million for. Bloodworth-Thomason then shopped the show around to other networks and took the unique step of sending tapes of completed episodes to critics, in hopes of drumming up support and buzz. No such luck—that was the end of the road for Bad Road.

Set up at Fox as a prequel to the 1999 sex-saturated teen movie Cruel Intentions, Manchester Prep was a weekly soap opera about which attractive spoiled brat at a prestigious private school was sleeping with which other attractive spoiled brat. (The movie cast was swapped out for mostly unknowns, including future Oscar nominee Amy Adams in one of her first major roles.) But while Manchester Prep delivered on its predecessor's promises of tons of sexy action, it was too much sexy action—the first scene of the pilot featured a girl spying on her stepbrother in the shower, and then commenting on the size of his manhood. Fox endured criticism that the show was wildly inappropriate for its planned timeslot of 8 p.m., or "the family hour." Ultimately, Fox pulled the show from the schedule before it aired, citing "creative differences" with producer Columbia TriStar. However, the production company edited the two episodes that had been shot and repackaged it as a direct-to-video movie called Cruel Intentions 2.