10 Cancelled TV Show Pilots With Incredible Potential!
While TV Shows are dime a dozen, finding a good one that quenches your thirst for entertainment is a rare event nowadays.
They do not make it like the good old days anymore. But had they given these pilots a chance, things could have been so different.
Rewind
https://youtu.be/AHUtcUFrWNw
A genius engineer and physicist invents a nuclear bomb of his own design which is portable and much more powerful than conventional nuclear devices.
The bomb is detonated on American Soil, killing 9 million people in the process.
America intends to erase that mistake, quite literally as a matter of fact.
They have developed time travel technology which a CIA Agent duo will use to travel back in time and stop the detonation from happening.
The engineer who developed the nuclear weapon knew about the secret American time travel project and he had set events in motion that would force the time-traveling CIA Agents to save his wife in order to stop the bomb from detonating.
Tell me how it does not sound interesting. Rewind had the potential to put 12 Monkeys to shame.
Also Read: The 5 Best Things (& 5 Worst) About Marvel’s Avengers Game
Quarterlife
Back in 2008, the most prominent social media platform was MySpace, not Facebook, which was still a company in its nascent stages.
MySpace was so popular that the company decided to launch a scripted web series based on the lives of a group of bloggers in their early twenties called Quarterlife.
The unique thing about this show was actually its run-time. Each episode was just eight minutes long.
The short format webisode format was later utilized by Quibi more than a decade later.
But it was MySpace that did it first. They even managed to make NBC interested in their project.
But the network had to let the show go after they realized the audience was not yet ready to embrace the eight-minute format. Quarterlife was a show way ahead of its time.
Turn-On
The 1960s were not a good time to launch a show whose very name refers to sexual innuendo.
Turn-On was modeled on the Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In show.
It had some pretty strong sexual content and some hilariously timed political humor.
Turn-On is the only TV Show in history that was taken off the air while its pilot episode was still running.
WEWS of Cleveland pulled the plug on the show after its first commercial break.
Many other cable operators followed. ABC then axed the show and scrapped the rest of the series.
Heil Honey I’m Home
Okay maybe the people had come up with it had no idea how to go about it.
In the wrong hands, this show would have been an utter disaster.
The 1990s were not a good time to show Hitler and his wife Eva Braun dealing with Jewish neighbors.
There was no concept of political correctness in the nineties. The show being axed was a good decision.
But if the show was ever made today, it could have made for some good source of entertainment. Imagine if Jordan Peele is roped in to direct this series, a caricature of the adventures of Adolf Hitler.
This parody would have shown Hitler and Braun trying to do everything they can to get rid of their neighbors, failing every time.
The trick would have been to balance the show right so that it does not hurt any sentiments.
The audience of today is much more mature than the viewers of the yesteryears. We believe they could take it sportively.
The Will
Who here does not like a good old Family Tussle?
We sure do. Otherwise Keeping Up With the Kardashians would not have enjoyed so high viewership rates.
The Will was another reality television series with a rather interesting premise.
The head of the family’s death would lead to the members of the family getting into a Game of Thrones like a power struggle.
Using manipulation and deceptive tactics, each member would have tried to have their name be written on the will.
In the end, only one of them would become the sole beneficiary.
Even though the series was canceled after its debut episode, the network still filmed the series and aired in the United States of America as well as New Zealand.
Public Morals
https://youtu.be/jofisMjBxJ0
A similar series with the same name was launched in 2015. It was not as successful.
The original project was the brainchild of Steven Bocho. Bocho intended to bank on the success of NYPD Blue to launch another police procedural.
The spin-off project had many characters from NYPD Blue returning to reprise their roles in the new show.
But the same thing happened that has led to many good shows being axed – the Network only cared about ratings.
The pilot episode showed promise but had poor viewer ratings. So they dropped the series.
The actors who had come for Public Morals later were forced to return to NYPD Blue.
Co-Ed Fever
The time when CBS thought to make this show was perfect. It was the year of 1979.
The National Lampoon projects were all the rage. Generations at the cusp of the 1980s wanted a show that could give them raunchy, over the top entertainment like the Lampoon ventures.
The success of National Lampoon’s Animal House led to three other networks undertaking similar projects. ABC went ahead with their show – Brothers and Sisters while NBC went ahead with Delta-House.
CBS had plans for Co-Ed Fever. But the CBS show did not have the luck of its other two counterparts from the other networks. It did not even last half a dozen episodes.
The story was that an all-girls school had recently changed itself to a Co-Ed institution.
A group of horny teenagers would have added the flavor.
CBS realized later that unlike ABC and NBC, they did not have a big enough target audience for such a raunchy themed show.
The Melting Pot
The Melting Pot was the predecessor and the one that left the blueprint for another show that came years later with pretty much a similar script and story.
In the year 1975, the BBC Network gave permission to the showrunners of The Melting Pot to move ahead with the project.
It would have been written by Spike Milligan, who also starred as the lead character of Pakistani Immigrant living illegally overseas.
The actor’s use of a brown-face was probably the reason for its cancellation.
But the show is rumored to have some extremely amazing hilarious moments.
BBC had reportedly ordered a six-episode arc to be filmed for the project. But nobody has ever seen that for real.
The six-episode arc still exists in the vaults of the BBC video library.
Related: 10 TV Shows For Anyone Who Loves Superhero Movies
The Hasselhoffs
Do you think the Kardashians are the only ones worthy of having their life being broadcast everywhere in the name of entertainment?
We give you The Hasselhoffs, based on the life and times of David Hasselhoff and his two daughters.
The A&E reality TV show would have followed the daily lives of the Hasselhoff trio as they juggled with stardom, fame, money, and everything in between.
The first two episodes were released back to back in the form of an extended pilot. But the show was soon canceled by A & E themselves.
The network had already filmed the eight half-hour long episodes. The cancellation led to the series migrating to the United Kingdom.
The Biography Channel later released the eight Hasselhoffs episodes in their platform. This is one show we wanted to get the recognition it truly deserved.
South of Sunset
South of Sunset was a regular detective drama with a twist.
Glenn Frey, one of the original Beetles, is mostly known for his career as a part of the music band. But he did have a few acting roles from time to time.
South of Sunset was one such show with Frey as the lead actor.
In fact, it is the only show which stars Glenn Frey as the primary protagonist. The show had a solid plot and plenty of twists and turns.
The pilot episode looked promising. The reason the show did not make it past its pilot was because of a real-world event.
In the year of 1993 when the show’s pilot aired, an entire region of America was up in flames.
Wildfires had ravaged the city of Malibu and channels shifted coverage to the Wildfires, crushing the viewership rates for the show.
The entire West Coast was affected and the show suffered as a result. CBS later canceled the show because it got very less viewers even though it had a unique storyline to explore.
