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00:00 As much as we're living through a sure golden age of TV right now,
00:03 where there's simply more quality content available than anyone could possibly watch,
00:07 it's also fair to say that the industry is currently in a state of major change and uncertainty.
00:12 The streaming landscape is changing, TV channels are being bought and sold,
00:16 and things are being binned left, right and centre.
00:20 So, I'm Amy from WhatCulture, and here are 10 more TV shows that just got cancelled.
00:25 10. Charmed
00:26 We're kicking off this list with just one of the many high-profile, fairly mid-to-high-budget shows
00:33 that just got binned by The CW ahead of their sale.
00:36 Charmed debuted in 2018 to considerable fan scepticism about the very notion of a reboot.
00:42 Though reviews were generally positive out the gate, people obviously still had their hesitations.
00:46 As charming as the whole idea was, it was hardly ever a ratings smash,
00:51 and viewers dwindled off with each season,
00:54 definitely not being helped by the departure of lead Madeline Mantock.
00:58 Following her departure at the end of season three,
01:00 and before its fourth season had even finished airing,
01:02 The CW announced that Charmed wouldn't be returning for a fifth season,
01:06 and though no official reason was cited, we can assume it was due to the meagre ratings.
01:10 Overall, for a show that failed to generate much of a spark,
01:13 four seasons is pretty good innings.
01:15 Nevertheless, it's clear that the new Charmed couldn't match the iconic appeal,
01:19 or charm, if you will, of its predecessor, which ran for eight.
01:22 Given that this isn't the first Charmed reboot to fail,
01:25 if we look back to CBS in 2014, they had theirs too,
01:29 maybe we should learn from this and just leave that IP alone for a while.
01:33 Nine. Saved by the Bell.
01:35 Another reboot that invited immediate criticism was Saved by the Bell,
01:39 both trying to reboot the whole IP by giving it a fresh new look,
01:43 whilst also inviting fans of the past to come back by including its legacy cast.
01:48 Expectations were incredibly low prior to its 2020 premiere,
01:51 and yet Saved by the Bell went on to receive strong reviews
01:54 for its self-aware tone and diverse, inclusive cast.
01:57 Its first season was Peacock's most watched original series at the time of its airing,
02:01 and with season two going on to receive even stronger reviews,
02:04 the show's future seemed very secure.
02:06 And yet, mere weeks after it won Outstanding Comedy Series at the GLAAD Media Awards,
02:11 Peacock announced that it would be cancelled and wouldn't be returning for a third season.
02:15 Now, once again, they didn't give an official reason for its cancelling,
02:18 which, I mean, it's not that unexpected. It's not a thing that's often done.
02:22 But we can assume it was either due to maybe an immense drop-off in viewers,
02:26 or it could be down to the recent managerial changes in Peacock's structure,
02:30 meaning that they wanted to focus their energies on newer, buzzier, more popular stuff,
02:35 and this just didn't make the cut.
02:37 Either way, it's a sad fate for a series that defied understandably meagre hopes
02:41 to deliver a smart, reverent retooling of an iconic yet dated classic franchise.
02:46 8. 4400
02:49 Made victim to the CW's recent bloodbath, 4400 was yet another reboot of a classic series,
02:55 but maybe not one as popular or well-known as Saved by the Bell.
02:58 The original series ran for four seasons between 2004 to 2007,
03:03 and was ultimately cancelled due to both the Writers Guild of America strike
03:06 and dwindling ratings. This is all despite it receiving consistently strong reviews
03:11 throughout its run. The reboot, which launched last October,
03:14 actually failed to strike much of a chord at all. It was quite different,
03:18 and took a different tone from the original, focusing more on telling the story of white
03:22 supremacy, predominantly from a black viewpoint, which, as we can guess from, you know,
03:28 knowing audiences, uh, was quite controversial.
03:31 Scoring mixed reviews throughout, it reached its dramatic finale with rating figures that
03:35 were less than half that of the season premiere, and months after that season finished,
03:39 the CW confirmed its cancellation.
03:41 It seems fairly common for shows that have a particularly socially conscious or anti-racist
03:46 tone that people do not take a liking to that. People take it as a personal attack,
03:50 as if you can't just choose to not watch the show, so whilst there was a lot of pushback on that,
03:56 there was also a lot of praise for its ambition and what it was trying to do,
04:00 which makes it kind of a shame that it got cancelled. It could have had a lot more done with it.
04:05 7. MODOK
04:06 Now, MODOK certainly wasn't the cleverest or most visually stunning series that aired
04:11 last year, but this Marvel stop-motion animated comedy certainly demanded your attention once
04:15 you first got your eyeballs on it. Despite solid critical reviews, MODOK didn't really
04:20 capture the zeitgeist in any major way, as was likely reflected in its streaming figures,
04:24 which to date haven't been disclosed by Hulu, which in itself is a bit telling.
04:29 All the same, the show was recently cancelled by the streaming service,
04:32 adding yet another corpse to their pile of short-lived Marvel series,
04:36 including Hellstrom, which lasted just a single season, and Ghost Rider,
04:39 which was shelved before it even started shooting. Going off the history that they
04:43 have with Marvel shows, I'm saying that maybe they should just put a stop on that for now.
04:48 Wait till later and maybe try again? It doesn't seem to be working.
04:52 6. ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO
04:54 ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO is the second adaptation of Melinda Metz's beloved Roswell High Books,
04:59 made to follow the hit series Roswell, which ran for three seasons between 1999 and 2002
05:05 before being cancelled due to low ratings. It first launched on the CW in 2019 and initially
05:10 garnered quite a bit of criticism for being too similar, almost identical to the original.
05:16 Despite this alleged reimagining being not very imaginative at all,
05:19 it posted solid ratings through its first two seasons as the general reception steadily improved.
05:24 Yet mere weeks before the imminent debut of its fourth season,
05:27 the network confirmed that the upcoming season would be its last on air.
05:31 Once again, as we sort of expect, the CW didn't give an official reason for its cancellation,
05:36 but we can sort of guess it was due to viewing figures. They ended up with less than half their
05:41 original viewers when they got to their finale, and that isn't a good omen for going forward now,
05:46 is it?
05:47 5. MAGNUM P.I.
05:49 A reboot of the legendary 80s crime drama of the same name, this was always going to struggle,
05:54 particularly because it didn't of course have our beloved mustachioed star Tom Selleck at its centre.
05:59 This new take launched in 2018 as part of the Lenkov-verse of crime series reboots,
06:04 also including Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver.
06:07 Whilst scoring heavily mixed reviews across its run, it was still a consistent ratings hit,
06:11 maintaining an average of 7.48 million views per episode throughout season three.
06:16 When the fourth season rolled around, viewership figures were dropping significantly,
06:20 and yet this isn't actually the reason cited for its cancellation.
06:24 Instead, apparently CBS and Universal Television just couldn't reach a financial agreement about
06:29 going forwards with it. The cancellation also effectively brought the Lenkov-verse to an end,
06:34 given that Hawaii Five-0 wrapped up in 2020 and MacGyver was itself cancelled last year.
06:39 4. LEGACIES
06:41 The original spin-off series, Legacies, the third entry into the CW's Vampire Diaries universe,
06:46 began airing in late 2018 to solid reviews and ratings alike. Yet as the seasons rolled on,
06:52 it seemed that fans were really dissatisfied in the direction the show was taking,
06:56 particularly how they chose to tackle the main protagonist, Hope, and her development.
07:00 Season four's ratings have been absolutely dire so far, so it wasn't terribly surprising
07:05 when the CW included it in their recent spate of spring cleaning cancellations.
07:09 The decision not to proceed with a fifth season was also reportedly in part due to the network
07:13 preparing to be sold, and attempting to make itself look as attractive as possible to potential buyers.
07:18 If you think about it, keeping a declining show on the slate does them no favours at all.
07:23 The season four finale, airing on June 16th, is now the de facto series finale. Though this
07:28 seemingly brings the Vampire Diaries universe to an end, co-creator Julie Plec has stated
07:33 that she's already working on a fourth show, so we'll see.
07:36 3. NAOMI
07:38 We are all too familiar with superhero TV shows by now. If you've not watched any of the Marvel
07:43 shows that they've been just thrusting on us from every angle, then, I don't know,
07:47 maybe you've been living under a rock, maybe you just have stronger willpower than the rest of us.
07:51 But let's not forget about DC. Naomi is a DC TV show that was based off of a series of comics of
07:57 the same name, and even directed by Academy Award-winning director Ava DuVernay. Given
08:02 its pretty solid basis, it seemingly had a solid shot at success, and the series debuted to strong
08:07 reviews, with particular praise for Casey Waffle's performance as the title character.
08:11 However, beyond this, Naomi struggled to find an audience, debuting to barely 800,000 viewers
08:16 and achieving scarcely half of that number by the end of the season.
08:20 Now, it has to be said that this isn't entirely the fault of the content of the show,
08:24 if you were ever assuming it was. I would say it's in large part due to the huge,
08:28 random pauses they had in airing the episodes. At one point, they even paused it for the Beijing
08:34 Olympics. It does absolutely nothing for your viewer base to suddenly have to wait
08:38 more time than expected to get your next instalment of something. It kills any
08:42 tension that was being built up, and it does nothing to keep people engaged. So,
08:46 obviously, people are going to drop off.
08:48 And so, just two days after Naomi wrapped up its first season, the CW confirmed it wouldn't
08:54 be returning. As with Legacies, Naomi was just another underperforming title to get the axe
08:59 before the CW's big sale.
09:01 2. Riverdale
09:02 The cast of Riverdale is finally free! They've all been released from their cages! They can
09:06 go and do other things now! I thought I'd never see the day.
09:11 I joke, of course, but it has been a bit of a long-running gag that the cast of the hit teen
09:16 drama series have themselves grown long weary of its increasingly absurd storylines. At the rate
09:21 it was going, I really thought it was never going to end. However, Riverdale is one of the latest
09:26 shows to get the axe under the CW's big spring-cleaning bash. The network confirmed that
09:31 the Archie Comics adaptation will end with its upcoming seventh season, set to debut next year.
09:36 At least in this case, there was a prevailing feeling amongst the fans, the cast, and the crew
09:40 that it was time to bring this to an end. I mean, it seemed fitting, seeing that season six had
09:44 debuted with a steep ratings drop from the prior season, one which they haven't recovered from so
09:49 far. Considering the fame that it granted their leads, it will genuinely be interesting to see
09:53 what they do next, and I wish them the best. There's a lot of very talented people on that
09:57 show, it's just unfortunate that the show itself was iffy at best.
10:01 1. Mr. Mayor
10:04 Sitcom king Ted Danson debuted his new series, Mr. Mayor, in early 2021. He plays a
10:10 businessman running for mayor of Los Angeles for all the wrong reasons, and between the reliability
10:14 of Danson and the series co-creator Tina Fey, it seemed primed to be a surefire hit. Their debut
10:20 season received very mixed reviews. People generally didn't know how they felt about the
10:25 very broad style of comedy, but they knew they felt good about Ted Danson, which is unsurprising.
10:30 Even though the show's ratings had halved by the end of the season, its finale still pulled in a
10:34 respectable 2.53 million US viewers. And let's be real, you could do much worse than that.
10:40 When season two rolled around, the fans considered it a pretty good improvement,
10:44 but critics just really couldn't get on board with the hype. In fact, most of them didn't even
10:48 review it. The show's rating decline continued, with the second season bottoming out at 1.49
10:53 million US viewers in its penultimate episode. And then, literally two days after this episode
10:58 aired, NBC announced Mr. Mayor's cancellation. Understandably, a lot of fans were very
11:03 disappointed, not only because to them it had been on and up, but also because historically,
11:07 a few NBC seasons actually only find their feet in the second and third go-that-get.
11:12 And we're never going to get that now. Ugh, what could have been?
11:16 And with that, we've reached the end of this list of 10 more TV shows that just got cancelled.
11:20 Were you a big fan of any of these shows? Tell me all about your heartbreak in the comments down
11:24 below and we can all cry together. If you don't feel like crying though, head on over to whatculture.com
11:29 to see more articles and lists like this every single day. And as always, I've been your local
11:34 Riverdale hater, Amy Rappeer, and I'll catch you next time.