FromMindhuntertoParty DowntoSanta Clarita Diet, the 2010s brought plenty of disappointing TV show cancellations. For every hit show, there are dozens that didn’t find an audience and ended up getting cancelled. In the 2010s, at the beginning of the streaming age, there was an unusually high number ofTV shows that got cancelled too soon.
10Daredevil
Netflix’s street-level Marvel universe would meet an untimely end when its characters got tangled up in rights issues in the midst of a corporate merger, but its first entry,Daredevil, remains one of the best comic book shows ever made. WithDark Knight-level gritty realism andJohn Wick-level fight scenes,Daredevilwas the best possible adaptationof the Man Without Fear.
Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio were perfectly cast and perfectly matched as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, and there was still plenty of story left to tell when the show was cancelled after three seasons.Disney eventually brought it back as the rebootedDaredevil: Born Again, but it wasn’t the sameas getting another bloody, brutal season of the Netflix show.
9Santa Clarita Diet
Santa Clarita Dietwas a delightfully gory, totally unique horror comedy. Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play a pair of married real estate agents who get drawn into the world of the macabre when a zombie parasite makes its way into their family. The show hilariously juxtaposed the horrors of cannibalism against the laidback Californian attitude.
The series was just finding its footing and establishing its darkly comic voice when Netflix cancelled it.The cancellation ofSanta Clarita Dietwasone of the first cancellations that earned Netflix a reputation for axing great showslong before their time. I’ll always wish we’d gotten more of this bizarre little sitcom.
8The Get Down
Baz Luhrmann brought his extravagant cinematic vision to the small screen inThe Get Down. This stylish musical series takes place in the South Bronx in the late 1970s, during the heyday of disco and R&B music. It chronicles the rise of hip-hop through song and dance, ambitiously intercut with newsreels from the time in which it’s set.
Netflix cancelledThe Get Downafter just one two-part season, comprising a total of 11 episodes.It was a really expensive show to produce and didn’t attract a big enough audience to justify those costs, but it’s still a disappointing loss. This was one of the most visually stunning TV shows ever made, with a stellar cast.
7Sense8
In 2015, Netflix premiered a new sci-fi epic from Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the visionary creators ofThe Matrixfranchise.Sense8was every bit as imaginative and profound asThe Matrix, but it didn’t capture the zeitgeist or attract mainstream audiences in the same way. The streamer cancelledSense8after just two seasons, leaving audiences on a cliffhanger.
The small but devoted fan base thatSense8did have loved it enough to fight for its revival after it was prematurely cancelled. To their credit,Netflix listened to the criticisms and greenlit a two-and-a-half-hour series finale to properly wrap up the story. But that was just a consolation prize; this show deserved to be a huge hit.
6Togetherness
The Duplass brothers brought their signature mumblecore blend of naturalistic humor and mundane, relatable drama to the small screen in HBO’sTogetherness. The series deals with universal themes of marriage and family as a middle-aged couple tries to keep their relationship afloat while raising their young daughter and looking after two new lodgers: the husband’s best friend and the wife’s sister.
Throughout its two seasons,Togethernesswas one of the most tender and touching comedies on HBO.It was as if a Duplass brothers movie had been stretched to a few hours long, allowing them to really dig deep into their characters. The series felt like it was just getting started when it was cancelled.
5GLOW
Based on the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling circuit,GLOWwas a pitch-perfect blend of comedy and drama that sincerely captured the collaborative act of artistic expression. A syndicated wrestling show was not the creative outlet of choice for any of the main characters, but they all come together to turn it into something beautiful.
What makesGLOW’s cancellationextra disappointing is thatNetflix actually renewed it for another season. After season 3, Netflix greenlit a fourth and final season to allow the writers to conclude the story. But when the pandemic hit and production was delayed, Netflix decided to cancel that fourth season altogether to save some money.
4Hannibal
For three glorious seasons,Hannibalwas the scariest show on network television. It aired on NBC, so it was beholden to Standards and Practices, but Bryan Fuller and his team managed to sneak all kinds of grotesque, disturbing imagery past the censors. This was a network show about a cannibalistic serial killer that didn’t pull any punches.
Unfortunately, being on NBC meant that it struggled to find the right audience. The audience ofLaw & OrderandThe Tonight Showwere turned off by all the violence and gore, and the cable viewers who enjoy that stuff never found it.IfHannibalhad premiered on HBO, it would’ve been the smash hit it deserved to be.
3Party Down
A lot of the actors inParty Downwere about to have a huge hit. Adam Scott was about to join the cast ofParks and Recreation, Lizzy Caplan was about to star inMasters of Sex, and Jane Lynch was about to become the breakout star ofGlee. But unfortunately, the stars didn’t align forParty Downitself to become a hit.
This ensemble sitcom about the disinterested and unfulfilled staff of a Los Angeles catering company isone of the funniest shows ever made. Each episode brings the cast to a new event that they can somehow ruin in a darkly hilarious way. It should’ve been one of the biggest comedies of all time, but it remains an underappreciated gem.
2The OA
Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’sThe OAis a fully unique vision. It’s set up as an intriguing mystery drama, but it also mixes in elements of science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural. This epic tale kicks off when a missing blind woman resurfaces seven years after her disappearance, having regained the ability to see.
The creators had planned out a five-season arc to tell their story in full, but Netflix would cancel the series after just two of those seasons had been produced. ThisendedThe OAon a massive cliffhangerthat audiences have been left wondering about for the past six years.
1Mindhunter
David Fincher’s grisly serial killer thrillerMindhunteris one ofthe best TV crime dramasof the past decade. It chronicles the early days of criminal profiling, as three FBI agents notice unsettling patterns in the behavior of mass murderers and essentially invent the concept of a serial killer in order to have the right terminology to describe them.
The series brought us face-to-face with notorious real-life killers like Charles Manson and the Son of Sam, but it was much more than just a who’s-who of famous murderers. It dug into the psychological toll of this work, studying murders and their perpetrators all day every day. WhenMindhunterwas cancelled in its second season,it was just getting started.
