Prime time tele­vi­sion is a cruel place. If a show scores below two mil­lion views con­sis­tently, you can expect it to be cut by the exec­u­tives. Some­times that hap­pens to truly great shows that just hap­pen to be com­pet­ing with other already pop­u­lar pro­grams like Amer­i­can Idol or even the Super­bowl. Nonethe­less, while every­one else is watch­ing Simon Cow­ell in his ill-fitting shirts, there are still those one mil­lion loyal view­ers wait­ing to see what hap­pens in their favourite (albeit unpop­u­lar) series.

Today, I’ll be shar­ing some of those shows that had great poten­tial, but a bad time slot. With all the garbage on TV these days, it might be good to shed some light on some shows that were unique, well pro­duced, or ahead of their time.

I just need to pref­ace this by say­ing that these shows didn’t nec­es­sar­ily end due to lack of inter­est. Some may have just expended the storyline.

1. Kings (NBC)

This is num­ber one for a rea­son. Rarely do I find a drama that I can actu­ally rec­om­mend to peo­ple, and with Kings it’s no excep­tion. Sure, the envi­ron­ment in which the story takes place is derived from the Bible, but that doesn’t bug me at all. The com­pelling act­ing and ever-evolving story always kept me count­ing the days until I could catch the next episode online. Unlike a lot of other shows that have a new sce­nario for each episode, Kings makes sure to play things out like one very long movie that’s been diced up into 43 minute pieces. You can typ­i­cally expect what’s going to hap­pen, but never how it’s done or what hap­pens along the way.

It’s too bad this show was up against Amer­i­can foot­ball as it had great poten­tial. Also, this was a more recently can­celed show, so there’s a lot of out­rage from the com­mu­nity to bring the show back. If not on NBC, hope­fully we can see Kings on some other cable net­work. Make sure to share your thoughts, if you like the show, with NBC’s executives.

2. Bionic Woman (NBC)

Based upon the 1976 series, the mod­ern day revival of Bionic Woman did a very good job at intro­duc­ing another gen­er­a­tion to the story that they would have missed out on oth­er­wise. I thought it did, any­way. Alas, it only ran for one sea­son in 2007 with a con­cur­rent six mil­lion view­ers and only con­sisted of eight episodes.

There was a mess of spec­u­la­tion as to whether the show was can­celed. You may or may not remem­ber the 2007 writer’s strike, which occurred dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the first sea­son. Of course, with­out writ­ers, pro­duc­tion halted and no more episodes were released. After the strike had ended, it appears that every­one had seem­ingly for­got­ten the series as it’s con­tent was slowly pulled off of the NBC sites and hulu. Two years later, and I still hold out a bit of hope for a revival, but it looks bleak.

3. LAX (NBC)

It’s prob­a­bly the avi­a­tion nerd in me, but I loved being able to see some (although scripted) behind the scenes action in one of the larger air­ports in the United States. Like Bionic Woman, LAX aver­aged about six and a half mil­lion view­ers across it’s thir­teen episodes and only lasted one season.

I can under­stand why this show was can­celed. It only seems mildly inter­est­ing to a small sub­set of peo­ple, and to every­one else it just seems like a drama encoded in the mun­dane oper­a­tions of an air­port. I do admit that I cared lit­tle about the actual story of the show and more about the United 744s in the back­ground, but at least they tried. Still, it was very enjoy­able to watch as it was a very unique set­ting for a drama to take place. I com­mend NBC for giv­ing the show a shot.

4. Last Comic Stand­ing (NBC)

Last Comic Stand­ing lasted through six hilar­i­ous sea­sons and is essen­tially the Amer­i­can Idol of come­di­ans. A panel of judges lis­ten to comics at var­i­ous cast­ing calls through­out the United States, deter­mines if they have the stuff, and for­wards them onto pro­ceed­ing rounds (in front of live audi­ences) if they do. How­ever, in the later rounds, teams are devel­oped and rival­ries form as the two teams com­pete against each other and ulti­mately only one comic is left stand­ing, hence the name.

As I men­tioned, six sea­sons of this show were pro­duced, end­ing in 2008. The show itself was gen­uinely funny, and I loved the idea of lis­ten­ing to con­cur­rent acts and jokes while the come­di­ans telling them were rated. Near the end every­one tended to step up their game in attempts to win, and the result was hysterical.

5. My Name is Earl (NBC)

This show had a very unique set­ting that I enjoyed very much, and a plot cen­tered around a soci­ety in which “hill­billys” rule is cer­tainly fresh. My Name is Earl is one of those shows where each episode drops the char­ac­ters into a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion, advanc­ing the sto­ry­line very lit­tle. Some­thing that always irked me was when­ever the show made progress to fur­ther develop the char­ac­ters, it would always be reset to how you knew them back in the very first episode even­tu­ally. That’s some­thing I’ve always hated about that type of story, but I still found the 22 min­utes of it each week very enjoyable.

Four sea­sons were even­tu­ally pro­duced, rak­ing in around eight mil­lion view­ers for each episode. The show was can­celed in 2009 dur­ing the pro­duc­tion hiatus.

6. Air­line (A&E)

Again, the avi­a­tion nerd in me loved this show. There’s just some­thing about pissed off, inco­her­ent pas­sen­gers that makes me all giddy. Also, the seem­ingly gen­uine look into the oper­a­tions of a CSA (cus­tomer ser­vice agent) for South­west Air­lines always was inter­est­ing to me. I’ve always been inter­ested, for some rea­son, in careers that most peo­ple take for granted.

The United States series with South­west as the focal air­line was actu­ally based off a United King­dom pro­gram of the same name, only fea­tur­ing Easy Jet as the air­line in the show. Unlike the UK series, how­ever, Air­line in the US was can­celed after three sea­sons in 2005. Pro­duc­tion of the UK ver­sion still continues.

7. Thank God You’re Here (NBC)

Derived from Aus­tralia, Thank God You’re Here is one of the few improv shows that seems to strike my funny recep­tors con­sis­tently. Actors are essen­tially dropped into skits with no idea what they’re doing, and they must play along to find out what the skit is about from the actors who are in on the story of the skit. The only clue the actors had before hand as to what the skit was about was the cos­tume they were told to wear. This show was on cal­iber in terms of funny with Who’s Line is it Any­way (another show I deeply miss).

Last­ing one sea­son over seven episodes, Thank God You’re Here was a very unique way of pre­sent­ing impro­vi­sa­tional com­edy. It’s short life was dur­ing the year of 2007.

8. This Amer­i­can Life (SHO)

I’m a fan of the This Amer­i­can Life radio show, and when it was announced that they would be pro­duc­ing a short, thirty minute show, I was estate. Basi­cally, inter­est­ing sto­ries from typ­i­cal peo­ple are deliv­ered as usual, but with visu­als and inter­est­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy. A few of the sto­ries were even taken from the radio show and retold (or maybe it was the other way around).

I wasn’t able to catch the rea­son of the series end­ing. I’m assum­ing that it was just too much work to keep going, as poor Ira (the host) also needs to work on the radio show. Regard­less, it was very provoca­tive and inter­est­ing while it lasted and I hope it returns. The last episode aired in early 2008.

9. Mal­colm in the Mid­dle (FOX)

Most peo­ple from my gen­er­a­tion remem­ber watch­ing the antics of the dys­func­tional fam­ily in which Mal­colm is in the mid­dle of. I did. Mal­colm in the Mid­dle was a unique spin on a [gen­er­ally] fam­ily friendly show. Each char­ac­ter had his own quirks that made him diverse from the rest of the fam­ily, keep­ing each episode a treat to watch. The show lasted six years, and it was great to see how the char­ac­ters matured over that time.

Sadly, the show ended in 2006 with seven sea­sons. Per­haps it was due to a grow­ing lack of inter­est among the view­er­ship. Mal­colm int he Mid­dle had a good run over­all, but didn’t quite end with any­thing sig­nif­i­cant as I had hoped. Alas, the show was very fun to watch and will remain one of my favourite programs.

10. King of the Hill (FOX)

Like Kings, King of the Hill has been can­celed recently. Most episodes fea­tured a form of satire in one way or another, and gen­er­ally wasn’t a dumbed down ani­mated com­edy show like Fam­ily Guy. Although enter­tain­ing, the com­edy in this show was not in the form of jokes, but rather in how the char­ac­ters lived their lives. The look of hor­ror on Hank Hill’s face when he sees some­one grilling on char­coal instead of propane is just hilarious.

The rea­son for the can­cel­la­tion is due to lack of inter­est. FOX is try­ing to cater to the kind of per­son that finds Fam­ily Guy funny, and a show like King of the Hill doesn’t really fol­low suit of that atro­cious pro­gram. More insult­ing, King of the Hill was replaced by a pro­gram enti­tled The Cleve­land Show, a deriv­a­tive of Fam­ily Guy. Thir­teen sea­sons can’t lie — this show was popular.