Shows you think deserved one more season (1 Viewer)

[ScottRE]

We got the "Death of the Incredible Hulk" TV-movie--which was on-paper intended to spin off Marvel's She-Hulk for a series, but never got around to it--that ends with Bill Bixby falling out of an airplane. Umm...okay.

Just be default, that's the best of the three because it doesn't incorporate any cheesy versions of Marvel characters. They were supposed to have a follow up movie called The Resurrection of the Incredible Hulk, but Bixby became too ill. I'm glad he did have some kind of finale (and it gutted me when it aired), but jeez, the crummy production values and "edited to video" picture quality is godawful. A true series finale, produced by Kenny Johnson, et al, where Jack MeGee puts 2 and 2 together finally, gets Banner on the stand, and gets him a cure, would have been sweet.

 

[dana martin]

Kolchak, The Night Stalker: I wish they could have done a second season.​

actually, this is the conundrum, while it has one season, some of the episodes just are not .... there yet and make it uneven, what would have been nice is for Universal, going back to the TV Movie of the week version for 3-5 more really great films,

just think Richard Matheson, writing, and who knows' a young Spielberg or anyother great up and coming director, how something like that would have turned out, Definatly creeper than the "mosty" kid friendly program that followed the first two Telefilms.

 

[darkrock17]

"The Riches" starring Minnie Driver. I think it was on Showtime. It got its second season cut in half because of a writer's strike, and by the time that was all sorted out, the momentum was lost. It ended on a doozy of a cliffhanger. Star Eddie Izzard was trying to crowdfund a movie to wrap things up but it never went anywhere.

It was on FX, not Showtime. That was a fun series, I really liked the promos that were created for the series. The song they used in them was Falling by Julee Cruise, where I learned she did the theme for Twin Peaks.

 

[Dave Lawrence]

I wish Soap would have got that last season so they could wrap up the storylines. Season 5 had already been mapped out (the show started with a five season bible). I'd love to see how all the characters turned out. Heck, I'd even settle for reading a summary of what was supposed to come.

Agreed. Even though Season 4 experienced a bit of a dip in quality in my opinion, I have a feeling Harris would have gotten things back on track for a great final season, considering she'd planned this as a 5-season overall story. Like you, I'd at least like to know what the general plans were for resolving the Season 4 cliffhangers as well as the series as a whole.

Another series I wish had been given one more year is Soap's spin-off Benson. The Season 7 cliffhanger regarding who would win the election for governor went unresolved.

In this case, at least some details were eventually revealed. Awhile back I came across an old post on another board that featured some quotes from showrunner Bob Fraser. He explained the cancellation, the cliffhanger resolution and a few of the plans they had intended for Season 8. (See the below link to the specific post I found.)

Season 8

I also agree with some of the other selections on this thread. Some shows do overstay their welcome and that's always a risk, but I think there are also quite a few cases of lost opportunities.

 

[JamesSmith]

Quark
Sarah Conner Chronicles
V (second series)
Firefly
Superman and the Legion of Superheroes (animated)
When Things Were Rotten
Man From Atlantis
The Big O

There are more, I've always loved the more broad comedy series that get to be a bit outlandish.

--jthree

 

[Matt Hough]

Would like to have seen extra seasons of:

The Addams Family
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Ellery Queen
Phyllis
Hooperman
Moonlighting
Moonlight (a marvelous vampire series with Alex O'Loughlin)
Forever
Limitless

 

[Malcolm R]

"The Riches" starring Minnie Driver. I think it was on Showtime. It got its second season cut in half because of a writer's strike, and by the time that was all sorted out, the momentum was lost. It ended on a doozy of a cliffhanger. Star Eddie Izzard was trying to crowdfund a movie to wrap things up but it never went anywhere.

That reminds me, I'd also add Pushing Daisies. Another great show that was tripped up by a strike (I forget if it was writers or actors), and cancelled too soon.

 

[Mark B]

Square Pegs

It is such a shame this clever and funny show self destructed in its first season.

 

[Taylor * D]

I think that pretty much every 20th century primetime serial ended on a cliffhanger. I think maybe Falcon Crest had a concluding episode, but that was the only one. And I really hated this, because you would spend years of your life investing in a show and never would have any payoff. Nowadays, if it's a long-running show, they usually (not always) get a couple episodes to wrap things up (clumsily) but at least a bad ending is better than none at all.

Knots Landing outlasted them all and got a proper series finale. Very satisfying; it has a wonderful, funny last line that sums up the series perfectly. If only the other primetime soaps ended their runs on a high note and not with a silly cliffhanger.

 

[Taylor * D]

Agreed. Even though Season 4 experienced a bit of a dip in quality in my opinion, I have a feeling Harris would have gotten things back on track for a great final season, considering she'd planned this as a 5-season overall story. Like you, I'd at least like to know what the general plans were for resolving the Season 4 cliffhangers as well as the series as a whole.

Another series I wish had been given one more year is Soap's spin-off Benson. The Season 7 cliffhanger regarding who would win the election for governor went unresolved.

In this case, at least some details were eventually revealed. Awhile back I came across an old post on another board that featured some quotes from showrunner Bob Fraser. He explained the cancellation, the cliffhanger resolution and a few of the plans they had intended for Season 8. (See the below link to the specific post I found.)

Season 8

I also agree with some of the other selections on this thread. Some shows do overstay their welcome and that's always a risk, but I think there are also quite a few cases of lost opportunities.

I've always felt that the fourth season Soap was an "in-between" season. It couldn't match the zaniness or heart of the third season. With Robert Guillaume spun off into Benson and Diana Canova leaving to star in I'm a Big Girl Now (where can I see an episode of this, just one!), I've always wondered what Susan Harris had mapped out for those characters in her show bible. What plot lines changed because of their absence? What were they originally? These are the questions that keep my TV brain up at night.

I finished Benson a couple of weeks ago. I knew about the cliffhanger ending and, to be honest, it didn't bother me too much. I've read that Bob Fraser interview before and think what they had planned for an eighth season sounds fine. By the end of the series I wasn't sure how I felt about the political plots. I enjoyed them because they were thematically different from other sitcoms at the time, but my enthusiasm grew thin around the sixth season. I really did enjoy it though. Especially Caroline McWilliams in the first and second seasons She had great chemistry with Robert Guillaume.

 

[Jack P]

I'd like to say "Battlestar Galactica" (the real one) but unfortunately a lot of us are familiar with a "memo" Glen Larson prepared that surfaced only in the late 90s that revealed had Galactica been renewed properly we would have seen changes similar to what happened with the second season of "Space 1999" in terms of cost cutbacks and a large number of supporting cast members dropped. The most shocking item was that Anne Lockhart's Sheba, who had just started to emerge as one of the strongest characters in the show (and a potential love interest for Richard Hatch's Apollo) was going to get killed off in the Season opener (which would also give us a TERRIBLE story idea involving the return of Sheba's father, the Commander Cain character so memorably played by Lloyd Bridges, who would be shown to have become some kind of Cylon replicant and get killed off). For Galactica fans like me who have written so many fanfic stories, we take for granted the idea of Apollo and Sheba long-term becoming a couple and this would have been totally unacceptable (Anne, who was expecting to be part of the second season never knew about this memo, and it wasn't as if Larson was unhappy with her since she worked with him again in two "BJ And The Bear" episodes and also on "Knight Rider". I like to hope she would have talked him out of this bad idea). Other unwelcome ideas was to have Apollo and Starbuck basically switch personalities, whereby Apollo's depression over Sheba's death turns *him* into the reckless daredevil type and now Starbuck becomes the "conscience" voice. When fans like me saw this memo we ended up feeling grateful that this never happened. The nightmare that was "Galactica 1980" was easy to dismiss as something that never happened, but had this kind of a "real" second season happened it would have destroyed all the good will built up by the great last episode of Season 1, "The Hand Of God".

 

[MartinP.]

One thing that time travel shows don't ever seem to get is...more time!

LOL!

I was devastated when I read that THE TIME TUNNEL was suddenly cancelled after its initial renewal reports. Those scars still haven't healed.

I was unusually affected by this cancellation, too, for whatever reason. Where I lived in 1967, I only knew if a TV series was cancelled when the Fall Preview issue of the TV Guide didn't show it on the fall schedule. It still rankles.

And the show was popular enough to be one of the few (only?) one season shows in syndication. Some stations would air it in summer months every day. Others would show it on the weekends. There was also a couple syndicated two hour movies of it comprised of two series episodes edited together.

I enjoyed the chapter in Martin Gram's 2012 released book, The Time Tunnel: A History of the Television Series, about plots for second season episodes under consideration.

 

[MartinP.]

Would like to have seen extra seasons of:

The Addams Family
[...]

Does anyone know if the 1977(?) Halloween with the Addams Family TV movie was ever released on home media? I'd like to view it just to see what it might have been like in color. It probably would've been if it was granted a third season.

 

[Jack P]

 

[MartinP.]

Frequency

Speaking of cancelled series that left things hanging... When Frequency was cancelled, I appreciated that the CW put together a ten minute tie-up to the series online so that you could surmise where it would have ended up. It was something. Thank you CW.

 

[Jack P]

"The Lost World" literally ended it's last season on a dire cliffhanger note complete with a "To Be Continued" card. They had some kind of show bible that outlined what was intended to happen over two more seasons worth of stories that resolved it. But that final note totally kills the show's rewatch ability with me.

 

[Ethan Riley]

I've always felt that the fourth season Soap was an "in-between" season. It couldn't match the zaniness or heart of the third season. With Robert Guillaume spun off into Benson and Diana Canova leaving to star in I'm a Big Girl Now (where can I see an episode of this, just one!), I've always wondered what Susan Harris had mapped out for those characters in her show bible. What plot lines changed because of their absence? What were they originally? These are the questions that keep my TV brain up at night.

I finished Benson a couple of weeks ago. I knew about the cliffhanger ending and, to be honest, it didn't bother me too much. I've read that Bob Fraser interview before and think what they had planned for an eighth season sounds fine. By the end of the series I wasn't sure how I felt about the political plots. I enjoyed them because they were thematically different from other sitcoms at the time, but my enthusiasm grew thin around the sixth season. I really did enjoy it though. Especially Caroline McWilliams in the first and second seasons She had great chemistry with Robert Guillaume.

Am I going crazy, or didn't Susan Harris write a book a few years ago that outlined the unfilmed storylines?

 

[Ejanss]

Does anyone know if the 1977(?) Halloween with the Addams Family TV movie was ever released on home media? I'd like to view it just to see what it might have been like in color. It probably would've been if it was granted a third season.

And yes, Lisa Loring has repeatedly expressed her opinions on the producer that wanted to "reunion" the old 60's cast, and put her late-teenaged self back in Wednesday's dress again instead of recasting.

 

[Harry-N]

I recall that summer of 1967. We always spent our warm-weather weekends at a summer cottage a couple of hours away from home. The TV landscape there was very different. We lived in in the Philadelphia environs, and this cottage received TV from Baltimore, MD. So much of the TIME TUNNEL episodes that year were seen on our black & white TV there. And being the weekend, we often bought a Sunday paper.

I'd read in the Philly papers that TIME TUNNEL was in the "renewed" column when the season ended, but the Baltimore Sun's TV booklet had a weekly column about TV, and this one, devastating weekend, there it was: TIME TUNNEL cancelled.

I had to treasure the remaining summer Friday nights - and it wasn't easy. At the time, the ABC affiliate was WJZ-13, and they were the channel that carried Orioles baseball. So a lot of Fridays that summer, I was denied seeing a rerun of THE TIME TUNNEL. Every now and then, I could catch the Washington affiliate on channel 7, but it was pretty snowy.

That fall of 1967, THE TIME TUNNEL went into syndication. TV stations were eager to snap up any recent color shows as color TV was becoming a big thing. Our Philly channel picked up the series and ran it Tuesday through Friday at 7 PM, but only a half hour. They chopped the episode at the halfway point so it took two days to air one episode. That way they could stretch the 30 episodes into 60 TV dates - 15 weeks before recycling them for the next run.

This is a recreation of their bumper screen:

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Sherlock

They actually haven't ruled that out, just that there are no immediate plans. I'm skeptical that it'll actually happen (especially as busy as the two leads are), but it is still possible.