5 More Cancelled TV Shows You Need To Watch

Part 2

I always had another five shows ready to recommend to you all and today I will. You may have heard of them, watched them or simply ignored them - but here's why you shouldn't.

Chuck (2007-2012, 91 episodes)

First on this list is the stunning Chuck. The longest-running of any show on this list at 5 seasons and 91 episodes total, Chuck is a charming, light-hearted spy-comedy about a geeky Nerd Herd employee at a Burbank, California shopping store whose old college rival (and spy, Bryce Larkin) sends him an email which uploads a file named The Intersect carrying all of the government's secrets to Chuck's brain.

Chuck cast L-R:
Jeff, Big Mike, Lester, Sarah, Chuck, Awesome, Ellie
Morgan, Casey

   Not enticing enough? How about the cast list? Zachary Levi is exceptional in the titular role of nervous, bumbling Chuck Bartowski and as good in the later seasons when Chuck has grown into his role as a confident and able spy. Levi is flanked by the typically comical gruffness of small screen star Adam Baldwin (Firefly) as NSA Agent John Casey, and Yvonne Strahovski (Dexter) as CIA Agent Sarah Walker. Among the other main cast members we have Joshua Gomez as Chuck's best friend and village idiot Morgan Grimes, Sarah Lancaster as Chuck's sister Ellie and Ryan McPartlin as her partner, "Captain Awesome". Seriously.

   I've already mentioned its charming light-heartedness, but at its core Chuck stands out for its imaginative premise and the incredible writing which steers every character's growth beautifully towards a stupendous finale. The balance between the main characters of the spy stories (Chuck, Sarah, Casey) and those centred around Chuck's actual life (Morgan, Ellie, Awesome and the minor Buy More side pieces Lester, Jeff and Big Mike) is consistent and organic.

   But by far the most outstanding part of Chuck's legacy is how far it got. Ready to be cancelled by NBC after just two seasons, fans launched an incredible and (unbelievably) successful campaign towards not the network but the fast food chain Subway, one of the show's sponsors, which led to Subway stumping up a percentage of the budget for each of the succeeding three seasons. We've all seen petitions and pleas throughout the Internet to keep other fan favourite shows on the air when they've reached the danger point, but none of the few that have been successful have ever managed to equal or eclipse the phenomenon that was Chuck's survival. And it paid its fans back dividends by giving us engrossing, inventive and stunningly unique plotlines.

   I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Since most trailers had genuine spoilers in them, I opted for this two minute non-show-footage teaser to whet your appetites.

Dollhouse (2009-2010, 26 episodes)

Created by Joss Whedon. 'Nuff said.

Dollhouse cast L-R:
Sierra, Victor, Topher, Echo, Adele, Paul, Boyd

   But on the off chance that singular name doesn't draw you in enough, I'll explain. Dollhouse was a FOX (surprised it got cancelled early?) television programme based on the idea of imprintable personalities. Our main character/Doll is a woman named Caroline Farrell. She offers herself to the Dollhouse for a period of five years, and has her Caroline Farrell personality wiped. She then becomes the Doll we know as Echo, and episode by episode she takes on a different personality. One episode she might be someone's lover, the next an assassin, then the next a doctor ... that sort of thing. And at the end of every episode she is wiped and returns to her Doll state, which reduces her mindstate to that of an innocent child with no feelings.

   In terms of cast, you'll find a few big names here too - and a number of Whedonverse regulars. Eliza Dushku stars as Echo, but we also have Amy Acker, Harry Lennix, Tahmoh Penikett, Olivia Williams, Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj, while the hilarious Fran Kranz plays the mentally unstable and horrifically amoral mindwiping technician Topher Brink. A number of big-name guest stars and recurring actors include Summer Glau, Alexis Denisof and, arguably the most impactful, Alan Tudyk as the psychotic escaped Doll Alpha.

   You'll find that the two seasons are incredibly different in production. For the first season, Dollhouse was used as part of FOX's Remote-Free TV initiative, where FOX tried to reduce the time viewers would spend sifting through channels during ad breaks, and as such each episode was about 50-52 minutes instead of the typical 40-44. (Remote-Free TV was a nice idea, but it didn't work so FOX chopped it, if you were wondering.)

   Following the reluctant renewal of the show, season 2 returned to the usual 40-44 minute length with a drastically reduced budget - as such some cast members were absent from a number of episodes (most notably Amy Acker, who appeared in only 3 of 13 season 2 episodes where she'd starred in 11 of season 1). Personally I find that this tactic worked, and the arcs of season 2 were of a much higher quality than season 1 - and because Dollhouse pretty much knew they weren't getting a season 3, we actually have here a show that got to write a pretty solid ending after just two seasons.

   Dollhouse is something different, one of the best outside-the-box premises I've ever seen on TV. Unfortunately for these kinds of shows, especially if they're aired on FOX, they don't tend to get the long run they should. But still, this is worth a watch, and the epic apocalyptic flashforward season enders are mind-blowing.

Reaper (2009-2011, 31 episodes)

This time we have the CW to blame for a TV show's early demise. [Damn you, CW!]

Reaper s1 cast L-R:
Sam, Andi, Ben, Sock, the Devil, Josie

   Reaper was a clever show about a shopping store worker with no aspirations and even less motivation who woke up on his 21st birthday to discover his parents had sold his soul to the Devil and he was now bound to work as a reaper, a form of bounty hunter who caught escaped souls and sent them back to Hell. Another very light-hearted and comedic show that didn't try to take TV by storm, but was somehow relegated to something I doubt very few will remember.

   Bret Harrison starred as Sam Oliver, the unlucky reaper, while Ray Wise played the Devil, a role I cannot disassociate him from whenever he appears in something else I watch. Rick Gonzalez and Tyler Labine (the latter of whom you will remember if you've followed my off-season roundups played lead character Pac in Deadbeat) portray Sam's best friends Ben and Sock respectively. Missy Peregrym plays Andi Prendergast, Sam's love interest.

   Reaper's first season had 18 episodes and a number of large and small arcs, but, similarly to Dollhouse, I found that season 2 (which for Reaper had just 13) was much tighter and an all-round better watch. And, like Dollhouse, Reaper managed to write a fairly satisfying ending of its own (albeit accidentally, since unlike Dollhouse it didn't know its likelihood of cancellation was so certain).

   Premise-wise it's not as strong as Chuck or Dollhouse, but it's an intricately explored concept that was unfortunately not long-lasting - although, of course, some of the furore around the Devil's portrayal would have been a huge factor in the show's low ratings and overall perception. I would have been happy with just one more season, but hey, I can't have it all. You, luckily, still have two seasons, and Reaper is definitely one of my favourites on this list.

Sanctuary (2008-2011, 59 episodes)

The second-longest-running show on this list, Sanctuary managed to span four seasons and a solid 59 episodes, including a full 20-episode third season. And an unbelievable 59 episodes they were.

Sanctuary L-R: Will Zimmerman, Helen Magnus, Ashley Magnus

   Sanctuary's premise is that Helen Magnus (played by Amanda Tapping, of Stargate SG-1) runs a sanctuary for Abnormals - she basically houses and keeps safe the otherworldly creatures that roam Earth. Mermaids, men with two faces, giant moth creatures ... anything dangerous or inhuman she protects from the world and protects the world from. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, since Helen Magnus, a Victorian-era-born scientist, is 157 years old and is part of The Five, a group of five people who experimented with vampire blood and grew extraordinary powers. Later seasons also go on to explore the worldwide Sanctuary network, rather than focusing solely on Magnus's Sanctuary, and worldwide Abnormal threats including the giant spider Big Bertha and the Hollow Earth Abnormal city of Praxis.

   The cast list includes Robin Dunne as Dr Will Zimmerman, Ryan Robbins as lycanthrope tech whiz Henry Foss, Christopher Heyerdahl (who plays two roles: Bigfoot and John Druitt), Emilie Ullerup as Ashley Magnus, Agam Darshi as Kate Freelander and the aforementioned Amanda Tapping as Helen Magnus.

Jonathan Young as vampire Nikola Tesla in 17 episodes

   It's easy to get sucked into this mystifying world, especially since the characters are as mysterious as the world the world they inhabit, and Magnus's character herself is a primary source of that intrigue and secrecy. Tapping is nothing but brilliant in the role of the sexy, tough and principled Magnus, and holds a believable Victorian-era London accent that makes me forget she's actually an English-born Canadian. Sanctuary is another fun drama which gets plenty of time to grow and play with each of its characters quite closely, and it is well worth the watch, especially since it carves out a truly beautiful ending for its explosive final season.

Terra Nova (2011, 13 episodes)

Terra Nova might have only lasted one short season, but heck if it didn't make an impact while it could. So huge were the set costs that FOX skipped a pilot and straight-to-ordered thirteen episodes, and so bold were its graphics that they could genuinely have passed as movie-worthy. Because Terra Nova's premise was that Earth, in 2149, was an over-polluted place with child-limit policies and rebreathers as part of your daily outfit - and scientists had found a solution: a time ripple that allowed humanity to go back to the Cretaceous era and start a new life ... in dinosaur land.

The Shannon family, plus Commander Taylor (far right)

   The Shannon family, consisting of dad Jim (Jason O'Mara), mum Elizabeth (Shelley Conn), son Josh (Landon Liboiron) and daughters Maddy (Naomi Scott) and Zoe (Alana Mansour) travel through the time ripple to begin a new life there - controversially, since doing so means breaking Jim out of prison because they had 3 kids instead of 2. And so ends the Tenth Pilgrimage to Terra Nova, and a life has to be built. But it isn't plain sailing. Maddy and Josh make friends, some in the wrong places, while Jim (as the colony leader's Sheriff) discovers the threat of Sixers (people from the Sixth Pilgrimage who are trying to kill the colony leader Nathaniel Taylor [Stephen Lang]), and of course they must all contend with the dinosaurs.

   I can't explain how Terra Nova didn't make it past the first season. The season's episode ratings (which held commendably steady) average out to a more than respectable 7.6m. (The only current FOX drama show close to that figure is it's runaway hit Empire, which draws in double.) Add to the argument that Terra Nova was executive produced by Steven Spielberg and created by the woman who wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I can only come to one conclusion as to why it was ever cancelled.

   FOX.

   FOX, who admitted the profitability of the show, didn't fancy to continue making that profit. Well ... OK.

   If you ignore the unfortunately unresolved cliffhanger, Terra Nova finishes strongly. Crazy broad family appeal, another simple, light piece of TV - only this time it's beyond mad to think it didn't make the cut!

Final thoughts

So here are five more cancelled TV shows you need to watch. I'm slotting this in quickly now before the on-season returns in the hopes that I can entice you to give something on this second list a quick punt (go on, binge something, you have time).

Also a reminder that from the first on-season roundup onwards, my roundups will be shared solely on my TVR Roundup Facebook page and not my personal Facebook. I'll also be looking to find some other places to share them, so I'll update you with that, too.

That's it for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time!

Sam