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Cancelled on a cliffhanger

Started by steveh, September 17, 2019, 11:33:18 AM

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Timothy

Both Dirk Gently and Happy. Still bitter about the second one. Happy was great.

And Brooklyn Nine Nine.

a duncandisorderly

this show was just beginning to settle around a complex ensemble cast- shift-workers ending up in different pairings because of whatever- when it was canned. shame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_(American_TV_series)

a duncandisorderly

honorable mention for 'studio 60', though in truth I think it had pretty much said all it was going to say before the episodes with john goodman even.

Phil_A

Speaking of Goodman-connected things, Now And Again, which used to run on an endless loop on late night ITV, was always a decent watch and a had a great cliffhanger ending to it's one and only season.

Poor Eric Close couldn't catch a break for a while there - see also the pretty decent X-Files knock-off Dark Skies, which had incredibly ambitious plans to carry on it's storyline from the sixties through to the present day, ending at the Millennium. Of course it was cancelled after one season so all that came to bugger all.

NJ Uncut

Clone High.  Bothered me this, load of internal unresolved plots I can now only half remember but they even had plans for other seasons which sounded ace. So typically it got cancelled

Quote

"We had grand plans for an overall arc for the show," said Lord. "Season one would be junior year, season two would be the first half of senior year, season three would be the second half of senior year, and at the end of season 3, they would go through a wormhole and go back in time to repeat senior year, and if there was a season five, it would be college."

Miller added, "We were gonna contrive many ways for them to stay in high school. Until they were even into their 30s. 90210 was maybe still on the air, and they had done everything they could to keep them around, and I think they graduated the same year we graduated from college, but those characters were all still there, and at that point all the actors were in their 40s, playing young people in their 20s."


https://filmschoolrejects.com/what-would-have-happened-in-season-2-of-clone-high-a-rope-of-sand-e52222c51a50/

Bently Sheds

I think the show was called Invasion. An American town in the swamps invaded by aliens who live in the water. The aliens can assume human form and infiltrate all parts of society.

It ended where the townfolk had been rounded up, loaded into cattle trucks and driven to the docks where the alien Sheriff and his alien cop pals herded them all to the end of the docks where an aerial shot showed the aliens in their true form swirling about in the water below waiting for the townspeople to fall in.

pigamus

Quote from: Moribunderast on September 18, 2019, 12:16:32 AM
FX were cruel bastards that year. Debuted both Terriers and Lights Out, which were both fantastic and then cancelled each of them. Terriers cancellation, especially, still hurts. I do remember the head of FX being very apologetic about it, basically saying "We KNOW this is a great show but nobody's watching it, sorry..."

There's just too much stuff, isn't there? Too much fucking stuff.

Hope you enjoyed this original observation.

BRen

It was being touted as a Twin Peaks/Lost style 'weird goings-on mystery' show but Happy Town from 2010, got pulled before all the episodes aired and the last couple got released on the ABC website. I was intrigued to see where that would have gone, as it started getting quite odd toward the end. Never really got a chance to go anywhere.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Phil_A on September 18, 2019, 07:27:05 AM
Speaking of Goodman-connected things, Now And Again, which used to run on an endless loop on late night ITV, was always a decent watch and a had a great cliffhanger ending to it's one and only season.
Cuh, I haven't thought about that show in years! But it was enjoyable enough fare - I remember human trampoline/wrestler Mick Foley appearing in one of the last episodes, helping some egg-related serial killer escape from clink.

Mister Six

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on September 17, 2019, 12:20:56 PM
There was talk of Carnivale being finished in the form of a graphic novel but don't think that ever appeared either.

Was there supposed to be another Twin Peaks after the 2nd series?

Didn't HBO refuse to allow Carnivals to be wrapped up in other media? I never understood why they did that.

There was originally going to be a series of Twin Peaks films that would have continued the story, I believe, until the critical and commercial slamming of Fire Walk With Me put paid to that.

Mister Six

Quote from: Moribunderast on September 18, 2019, 12:16:32 AM
FX were cruel bastards that year. Debuted both Terriers and Lights Out, which were both fantastic and then cancelled each of them. Terriers cancellation, especially, still hurts. I do remember the head of FX being very apologetic about it, basically saying "We KNOW this is a great show but nobody's watching it, sorry..."

Yeah, called a press conference to announce and apologise for the cancellation, which is highly unusual. FX fucked it from the outset with a shit as campaign though.

Still, it wrapped up all the plot threads didn't it? The only question was whether they were going to flee justice, but that seemed like an acceptable "lady or the tiger" ending.

(And the showrunner said they would have turned yer man in, and the second season would have opened in the prison yard with him discovering his baby's gender.)

Alberon

Quote from: studpuppet on September 17, 2019, 01:39:20 PM
Tripods

Just checking, but you do know the books the series was based on were finished?

DrGreggles

Probably not the worst idea to end on a cliffhanger - the show could still get picked up elsewhere.
Better than just giving up, I suppose: https://youtu.be/VvVR99yafr8

amputeeporn

Now and Again! Amazing to see that mentioned here - loved that show, especially as a 'husky' teenage boy. A show about a fat guy waking up in a hunk's body one day as part of some super solider programme massively appealed. Was v sad when cancelled on a massive cliffhanger.

Terriers is a real one, though. I honestly thought that first season was a crime masterclass. So much fun and with such understanding of the genre - it didn't put a foot wrong - built and built and knocked the ending out of the park.

They should have called it Beach Dicks.

Gulftastic

Grosse Pointe. Mentioning it in the alternate top 100 shows reminds me that it ended on a cliffhanger. Will Davethe stand in and Marcy ever get together?

The Big Bang Theory. Did Raj shag Buffy or not?

Blake's 7 had an ending that could be considered a cliffhanger.

mothman

Hard Sun is a recent one. Though, as discussed in the thread here about it, it feels likely the BBC went off it, shelving plans for a five-year arc leading up to the end of the world, and tacked on a rather final-feeling scene. Which I guess could conceivably have been the intended series 1 finale, though after they dumped the entirety of it - their high-profile Saturday-night drama serial - on iPlayer in its entirety after the first episode aired, I kinda doubt it...

Alberon

I think that was the intended series one ending - when the end of the world is revealed, but still four years before the final destruction. The idea for the show was great and I'd love to see it done properly.

But the way this particular show went at it was about the most spectacularly wrong-headed approach I've seen in many years. It got it wrong in just about every respect.

purlieu

The wonderfully and unfairly largely forgotten Invasion: Earth. It's a cliffhanger that totally works as an ending, but I believe it was left that way for the potential of a second series.

Outcasts, the universally slated, moved-to-a-graveyard-slot BBC 'unholy love child of Lost and Battlestar Galactica but without the memorable characters' sci-fi that actually had some interesting stuff going on in the final few episodes that suggested there was some potential for the future of the show.

mothman

Quote from: Alberon on September 20, 2019, 06:21:20 PM
I think that was the intended series one ending - when the end of the world is revealed, but still four years before the final destruction. The idea for the show was great and I'd love to see it done properly.

But the way this particular show went at it was about the most spectacularly wrong-headed approach I've seen in many years. It got it wrong in just about every respect.
Given two-thirds of the episodes were apocalyptically-inspired-serial-killer-of-the-week tales, I'd have to agree.

BeardFaceMan

I'm still hurting over the cancellation of jPod, cracking little series, that was.

Replies From View

After six series Red Dwarf ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved because no further series were ever made.

DrGreggles

Quote from: Replies From View on September 21, 2019, 09:11:28 AM
After six series Red Dwarf ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved because no further series were ever made.

All resolved in the AA advert.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on September 20, 2019, 06:57:23 PM
I'm still hurting over the cancellation of jPod, cracking little series, that was.

I really enjoyed that too, and feel the same way.

Keebleman

'Soap' spinoff Benson ended on the unresolved cliffhanger of a gubernatorial election result in which the title character was up against his old employer.  According to Wikipedia, Benson would have lost.

The Lurker

My Name is Earl. The show's director did explain how he would've ended the show which did give me some closure: https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/my-name-is-earl-how-the-cancelled-nbc-series-would-have-ended/


kngen

#57
Quote from: Piggyoioi on September 17, 2019, 09:34:49 PM
Did anyone watch Terriers?

Been a while since i watch it but I remember being so confused as to why it was cancelled.

Great series, great performances, great cast, big-hitters behind the camera and in the writers' room, dialogue that fizzed with energy, and was funny and moving, and had a really smart blend of overarching structure and standalone episodes that also fed into the series arc. But it was called Terriers, which is such a terrible name, and FX didn't have a clue how to market it ("The Rockford Files for the 21st century" would have been a start), so viewing figures were low (albeit consistent, because it was fucking great television and sucked you in from the get-go), and that was that.

It's the sort of thing Netflix should really pick up (I think more people have watched it there than when it was broadcast, just through word of mouth), even for a one-off. Enough time has passed for Britt to get out of prison or be run out of Mexico by drug cartels (or something), depending on how the cliffhanger played out, for it to pick up the story again 9 years down the line.


I feel like its a scary story screenwriters tell each other late at night - you've pretty much got the perfect show with everything in place, but nobody watches it because the name is awful and the TV execs don't want to push it very much either.


olliebean

Ten to one an exec came up with the name, too.

Brundle-Fly

The Santa Clarita Diet was a bummer ending.

Eddie Izzard series The Riches  was cancelled rather abruptly. He wanted to make a low budget movie to tie up the loose ends for fans but I don't think this came to fruition.