My Top Ten One Season Wonders

Some excellent television shows just never caught on, and failed to attract enough of an audience to justify a second season. There are legendary ones like "My So-Called Life," "Firefly," and "Freaks and Geeks," which launched the careers of familiar stars. I have my own list of beloved obscurities that I really, really wanted to see continue, but it was not to be. A quick note on eligibility here - shows had to be open-ended, and not designed to end within a single season like "Cowboy Bebop." They also have to have actually gone to air and run more than just a good pilot. Entries below are unranked, and they're mostly genre programs, because those were the ones I always got attached to very quickly. A lot of these are nostalgia picks, which I make no apologies for.

The Middleman - I will never say about a word against the existence of ABC Family, because they ran one of the great girl geek shows. "The Middleman" was a secret-agent spoof about Wendy Williams, trainee crime-fighter against the myriad forces of evil. Loaded with pop-culture references, meta-humor, snark, and high energy, this was a show I fell for immediately. I loved every single minute of the twelve brief episodes, and the Comic-Con table read of the sadly unproduced thirteenth, which provides a little bit of much-needed closure.

Eerie Indiana - After "Twin Peaks" but before "The X-files" came this supernatural sitcom, about a pair of boy detectives investigating the mysteries of Eerie, Indiana, "the center of weirdness for the entire planet." Elvis is a resident of Eerie, of course, along with a mother who keeps her kids in Tupperware, a boy whose dental gear translates dog barks, and the ghost of the worst bank robber in the West. "Eerie" was a childhood favorite that was pulverized in its time slot by "60 Minutes," and briefly resurrected in the late 90s on FOX Kids.

Nowhere Man - The would-be fifth network UPN recedes further and further back in the cultural memory every day. It had a couple of interesting shows, including the paranoid thriller "Nowhere Man," starring Bruce Greenwood as Thomas Vale, an ordinary man who one day finds his life erased and is forced to go on the run to discover who's after him. As mystery shows go, "Nowhere Man" was remarkably good about actually advancing its story week to week, and ended on a great reveal that left lots of unanswered questions. I still want answers.

Wolverine and the X-Men - This was the perfect happy medium between the plotty but chaotic 1992 "X-Men" cartoon created by Saban, and the later "X-men: Evolution" that had far superior technical quality, but was stuck with teenage characters. The "Evolution" crew finally got to tackle grown-up mutants and more substantive stories in this 2009 tie-in for the first "Wolverine" movie. Sadly, Nickelodeon seemed at a loss with what to do with it, and despite a strong set-up for a second season, we only got 26 episodes of the best animated "X-men" series.

Wonderfalls - Poor Bryan Fuller is responsible for so many offbeat cult shows that never make it past two seasons. "Wonderfalls," one of his oddest creations, only made it through four episodes on FOX before being unceremoniously yanked. The show follows the misadventures of a post-grad, Jane Tyler, in transitional hell, who works as a gift shop clerk at Niagra Falls. One day the tchotchkes start talking to her, giving oblique instructions in order to help people in crisis. Caroline Dhavernas was great in the lead, and hasn't had a part as good since.

Space: Above and Beyond - Fox's Friday night 8PM hour, leading into "The X-files" is littered with interesting genre shows that only lasted a single season, including "MANTIS," "VR5," and "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." My favorite of the bunch was "Space: Above and Beyond," created by two "X-files" veterans, Glen Morgan and James Wong. It was a military space adventure, following a small squadron of space fighter pilots in an ongoing conflict against enemy aliens. Think of it as a smaller, less ambitious "Battlestar Galactica."

At the Movies - I'm reaching here, but I'm counting the final season of the show hosted by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. It was not a return to the glory days of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, but it was much better than the train wreck that was the Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz experiment, good enough that I was watching regularly again, and good enough that I was genuinely unhappy at the news of cancellation. I still read Scott regularly and catch Phillips's appearances on Filmspotting, but I think the duo could have gone on to be great.

The Tick - It was pretty much cancelled before it aired, but the live-action version of "The Tick" starring Patrick Warburton was a joy to see realized. I knew it was a severely compromised adaptation that never quite reached the same bizarre comedic heights as the 90s cartoon series, but I didn't care. I loved Warburton in the goofy latex suit. I loved Nestor Carbonell as Batmanuel, an improvement on Die Fledermaus, in my humble opinion. I loved the torrent of puns and visual insanity. Alas! Only nine episodes were ever aired.

Masters of Science Fiction - So short-lived that most people haven't heard of the show. This was a summer anthology program from the same creators of "Masters of Horror," except without any of the marquee talent involved. Its one big gimmick was that Stephen Hawking provided some canned intros. Still it gave us good adaptations of Harlan Ellison's "The Discarded," and Robert Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man." Many similar anthology series have come and gone over the years, but the potential for better was there, which is what irks me the most.

The Storyteller - Jim Henson's 1980s fantasy anthology is often listed as a miniseries, but it sure looked like a continuing series to me. Each of the nine episodes was scripted by Anthony Minghella, based on European folk stories and fairy tales. Guest stars included many familiar faces like Sean Bean and Miranda Richardson, but the real star was the Storyteller himself, played by John Hurt, and backed by the wizardry of eye-catching special effects and Henson Creature Shop puppet creations. To this day I've never seen anything else quite like it.
---