10 TV Shows That Were Canceled After A Single Episode

Although some TV shows (Firefly, My So-Called Life, and Freaks & Geeks, to name a few) were famously yanked off the air after just one season, others haven’t even gotten that much time to grow an audience. Instead, they were canceled after the very first episode, in some cases with an entire season already in the can. Whether it was because they were ill-conceived or poorly received, the 10 shows below got the axe after a single episode aired.

Public Morals (1996)
Dot Comedy (2000)
The Rich List (2006)
Emily’s Reasons Why Not (2006)
South of Sunset (1993)
Swamp Thing (2019)
Quarterlife (2008)
Lawless (1997)
Osbournes Reloaded (2009)
Co-Ed Fever (1979)

Public Morals (1996)

After the success of NYPD Blue in the early ’90s, producer Steven Bochco co-created the spinoff series Public Morals with screenwriter Jay Tarses. The show, which premiered on CBS in October 1996, followed John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup from NYPD Blue) and an odd group of detectives in the NYPD vice squad, played by Peter Gerety, Donal Logue, and Julianne Christie.

While the spinoff kept NYPD Blue’s envelope-pushing and vulgar tone, Public Morals was a 30-minute comedy that failed to resonate with critics and general audiences alike. CBS ditched the pilot episode over complaints about indecent language and aired the second episode as the premiere instead, but that didn’t help: Variety’s critic declared that the show “looks like an excuse to show foolish people behaving extremely poorly with each other, with the vice squad context merely laying on a sneering, leering veneer.” CBS canceled the series less than a week after the premiere. Brochtrup returned to NYPD Blue and stayed on the cast until the series ended in 2005.

Dot Comedy (2000)

Hosted by the Sklar Brothers, Dot Comedy was an early, pre-YouTube attempt to bring funny internet videos to a broader audience. The pilot was like America’s Funniest Home Videos meets The Daily Show, with the hosts reacting to the internet videos in front of a live studio audience. Correspondents Annabelle Gurwitch did a bit about online dating and Katie Puckrik interviewed the creator of the Air Sickness Bag Virtual Museum.

Five episodes of the series were filmed, but ABC pulled the plug after one episode and the remaining four episodes never aired. Internet culture back then wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is today, so it’s easy to see why Dot Comedy failed. Similar TV shows like Tosh.0 grew in popularity in the following years, however, suggesting Dot Comedy might have just been too ahead of its time.

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The Rich List (2006)

If your pop culture knowledge could earn you up to $250,000, you’d probably jump at the chance, right? That was the premise of Fox's short-lived reality game show The Rich List, which pit two teams against each other in multiple rounds of pop culture trivia.

Each team—which was comprised of two strangers—sat in separate soundproof booths. The host named a category and asked each team to bet on how many things within that category they could name. The opposite team would have their sound turned off as the other team made their bet until, finally, one team challenged the other to follow through on their bet. The team that first successfully won in naming two lists would move to a bonus round, where they had the chance to win up to $250,000.

Unfortunately for Fox, viewers found The Rich List confusing to follow, and the network canceled it two days after the first episode aired in November 2006.

Despite getting pulled in the U.S., The Rich List was revived as The Money List, which had the same premise. It aired on GSN in 2009; the revamped version aired in international markets, including the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, and other countries.

Emily’s Reasons Why Not (2006)

Emily’s Reasons Why Not (based on Carrie Gerlach’s novel of the same name) was an ABC comedy that some critics considered to be a PG version of Sex and the City, but set in L.A. instead of New York City. It followed Emily Sanders (Heather Graham), a successful self-help book editor who was ironically unsuccessful at dating. After getting advice from her therapist, she comes up with a new method of dating in Los Angeles—if she can list five reasons to dump someone, then she does. Five episodes of the show were filmed, but ABC shelved the remainder due to the pilot’s bad reviews.

South of Sunset (1993)

In 1993, Eagles frontman Glenn Frey starred in South of Sunset on CBS. Frey played Cody McMahon, a private eye with an office south of Sunset Boulevard. With his young assistant (Aries Spears) and receptionist (Maria Pitillo), McMahon unconventionally solved mysteries around town.

Despite a heavy marketing push from CBS during the 1993 World Series, South of Sunset was put on hiatus and then eventually canceled after its premiere episode. According to the Los Angeles Times, the TV show received the lowest premiere ratings on one of the “big three” networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—at the time.

The following year, VH1 re-aired the first episode of the series, as well as the next four episodes, as part of the Eagles Family Tree Week. The cable network ran an entire week of programming—including interviews, concerts, music videos, and more—dedicated to the band’s Hell Freezes Over reunion tour and album of the same name.

Swamp Thing (2019)

Despite positive critical reviews, Swamp Thing was canceled in June 2019, less than a week after it premiered on the now-defunct streaming service called DC Universe. The series followed Dr. Abby Arcane (Crystal Reed) as she investigated a mysterious and deadly swamp-borne virus in Marais, Louisiana. After the death of scientist Alec Holland (Andy Bean), she discovers his plant-based alter ego, Swamp Thing (Derek Mears), and how he evolved from the virus.

The show experienced some creative differences before the pilot aired, leading its 13-episode order to be cut to 10 episodes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Sources say the timing of the cancellation was spurred by the studio’s decision to bypass paying millions to store the show’s physical sets in North Carolina. That decision led to the cancellation leak.” The remaining nine episodes of the series aired as planned and were added to the library on DC Universe.

Soon after the show was canceled, fans began a revival campaign called #SaveSwampThing to demonstrate to WarnerMedia that there was enough support for the TV show, but it didn’t result in a renewal.

Quarterlife (2008)

The NBC show Quarterlife—about a group of twentysomethings coming of age on the internet from the producers of Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life—was adapted from the script of an ABC pilot. The show was filmed traditionally but was broken up into eight-minute-long episodes that launched on MySpace, YouTube, and the Quarterlife official site in 2007.

The show was a hit online, so NBC picked up the show and ran the hour-long version of the drama in February 2008. But the episode failed to find an audience, and as a result, it was canceled after one episode thanks to dismal ratings.

“From the first three minutes, I knew it wasn’t right,” Quarterlife co-creator Marshall Herskovitz later told The Hollywood Reporter. A few weeks later, the remaining five episodes were broadcast on Bravo, NBC’s sister cable network.

Lawless (1997)

Making the leap from the NFL to Hollywood is never easy, but former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian “The Boz” Bosworth has built a decent career as an actor over the years. Unfortunately, his Fox series, Lawless, was a resounding failure: Fox canceled the midseason replacement—about ex-special forces operative John Lawless, a tough motorcycle-riding private eye in glamorous, yet rough, Miami, Florida—after airing one episode. “Lawless did not meet our expectations creatively or from a ratings perspective,” Peter Roth, then Fox Entertainment Group president, said in a statement.

Osbournes Reloaded (2009)

Osbournes Reloaded was a variety show hosted by Ozzy, Sharon, Jack, and Kelly Osbourne. Its only episode aired on Fox after American Idol in March 2009, but a handful of Fox affiliates refused to air it due to concerns of vulgar language and risqué subject matter. Critics weren’t kind either, with one critic positing that it might be the “worst variety show ever.”

Co-Ed Fever (1979)

Animal House was wildly popular, so ABC, CBS, and NBC created shows focused on college frat house hijinks. NBC had Brothers and Sisters; ABC had Delta House (an official adaptation of National Lampoon’s Animal House); and CBS’s show, Co-Ed Fever, focused on an all-women’s college that was admitting men for the first time in the school’s history.

While all three sitcoms premiered and then got canceled in early 1979, CBS’s attempt was the shortest-lived. The network aired the first episode of Co-Ed Fever during a “special preview” in February 1979 with the TV premiere of the movie Rocky as its lead-in. The following day, CBS canceled the show due to its terrible ratings. All six episodes of Co-Ed Fever later aired on Canadian TV.