Dramas on Fox tend to get the short end of the proverbial scheduling stick next to ever-popular reality and comedy shows. While most networks would wait for at least the pilot episode of a series to dry before taking it off the air, Fox has been known to pull the plug as early as the first episode. That being said, these short-lived series still managed to make an impact during their limited time in the small screen space.
Hieroglyph
A historical fantasy thriller on network television that’s (dare we say it) sexy? Sign us up!
Hieroglyph, which was written and created by Travis Beacham alongside several New Girl crew members, was intended to compete with Game of Thrones. Instead, the show never made it to air. This ambitious series, set in Ancient Egypt, would have followed an imprisoned thief who was released in order to find a powerful lost scroll.
Unfortunately, a changing of the guard spelled the end of this series before it began. The show was canceled shortly after the departure of programming chief Kevin Reilly, who had green-lit the series, though the official story was creative differences from what was expected. The series had just wrapped its first episode when word went out, and several un-shot scripts still exist to this day.
Lone Star
Not to be confused with 9-1-1: Lonestar, Lone Star has the sad distinction of being canceled after only two episodes.
Six whole episodes were produced of the show, which followed Robert Allen, a conman who strings along two different women in two different Texas towns. In Houston, he’s married and works for his oil-tycoon father-in-law, while simultaneously, four hundred miles away, he’s Robert... with a girlfriend.
The pilot, which was filmed in Dallas, was green-lit in 2010. Unfortunately, despite critical reception comparing it to Friday Night Lights, the show never made it past a week.
Prior to its cancelation, Creator Kyle Killen posted an emotional plea for the series on his blog, saying:
“For us to survive we’re going to have to pull off a minor miracle. Statistically, new shows tend to lose viewers in their second week. We’re aiming to gain them... The good news is, our audience was so small that if my Mom AND my Dad watch it we’ll pretty much be there.”
Unfortunately, the ratings failed to improve, and production was cut shortly thereafter.
Skin
Skin, not to be confused with perhaps equally spicy teen dramedy Skins, first aired on Fox in 2003. The serial drama was a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, only the feuding families were members of law enforcement and pornographic circles, respectively.
Starring D.J. Cotrona and a young Olivia Wilde, the show, which was highly promoted at the time, floundered due to mixed reviews and poor ratings. The series was officially canceled after only three of its eight-episode slate. The remaining five episodes were revealed after the series was acquired by SOAPnet.
Wonderfalls
This short-lived show followed Jaye, a recent college graduate with a dead-end job as a sales clerk at a Niagara Falls gift shop. Her attempts to make friends and influence people throughout (both real and imagined) were nothing short of endearing.
Filmed on-site in Ontario, Wonderfalls developed a loyal fan base and decent critical reviews during its time. The series, which ran after The Apprentice, was canceled shortly after its fourth episode, despite showing some promise in reruns. Fans spearheaded a campaign to bring back the series, which was shopped around after its cancelation. Unfortunately, it was never picked up again.
Drive
Again not to be confused with similar-sounding movies and TV series, Drive featured Nathan Fillion as an unwilling participant in a cross-country automobile race with a multi-million dollar prize on the line. This series featured some serious acting clout, from Emma Stone to Taryn Manning and Melanie Lynskey. Unfortunately, the show faced stiff competition in its regular time slot from competing network’s Deal or No Deal and Dancing With The Stars. While it garnered a respectable six million viewers during its premiere, it failed to live up to the network’s performance expectations in the long run. In the end, only four episodes in total were aired on Fox.
The network promised to air the last two episodes live, but placed them online instead. Executive Producers for the show eventually gave an interview in which they outlined the rest of the series for fans. Interestingly enough, the show was barely able to qualify for an Emmy because of this - without those remaining two, they never would have been able to make the Emmy's six-episode minimum at the time. Unfortunately, this isn’t the last time Fillion appears on this list, but not to worry—he’s back on network and doing just fine in his recurring role in The Rookie on ABC.
Reunion
This time-jumping drama series, which premiered in late 2005, chronicled the lives of six high school friends, one of whom meets a brutal demise at their 20th class reunion. Each episode in the show was intended to follow one year of their lives leading up to the murder investigation in the modern day. While viewers did eventually find out the identity of the victim in episode five, the murder itself has remained unsolved in the nine episodes that aired. A rating drop after a promising start spelled the ultimate demise of this proposed twenty-plus episode series.
Firefly
Every major network has the one that got away, and Firefly is no exception. This Joss Whedon vehicle was way ahead of its time when it premiered in 2002. Featuring Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, and Alan Tudyk alongside an all-star cast, this Western space drama followed a renegade crew aboard a small spacecraft. Unfortunately, trying to survive on Earth proved equally difficult. The gritty series was unusually billed as a genre comedy by the network, who asked for constant rewrites to replace the sex scenes with more fighting instead.
To make matters worse, the series was shown out of order on air. These kerfuffles, plus the fact that the show was expensive to make, proved too much for the series, which was canceled with three episodes left to air. Cutting the show short left some major continuity questions behind, many of which were thankfully answered in the accompanying film release of Serenity in 2005. Since then, its DVD purchases have soared, and now, nearly twenty years later, the show is ready for a reboot on its new (though still related) home, Disney+.
Vanished
The longest-running of these pulled series goes to 2006’s Vanished. Vanished centered around the disappearance of a Georgia Senator’s wife, which accidentally unveils a web of other nefarious activity. The show featured performances by John Allen Nelson, Joanne Kelly, and Ming-Na Wen, among others. The series, which was intended for a 22-episode run, was shut down early due to low viewership. While the missing wife’s fate was ultimately revealed in its final aired episode, little to any of the remaining plot lines were tied up in the long run. A litany of similarly named projects would ensue, with different plot lines of course. It was also rumored that an episode of the hit Fox show Bones was intended to resolve at least one of the mysteries, but that episode too never came to fruition.
Whether they were crammed into an abnormal time slot or they simply didn’t get enough eyeballs on the screen, these shows proved that you don’t need to be long-running to become a cult classic. Thankfully, many of these shows managed to scrape out the last of their seasons elsewhere... though not all of them were so lucky. Now, in the golden age of reboots, it wouldn’t be unlikely to expect these shows to resurrect themselves sometime in the future.