One-Episode Wonder

There are two types of shows that last for a single episode — the ones that are immediately canned, and those that never get picked up in the first place.

The former category, while rare, should be easy to explain: if a show gets extremely negative reviews, poor ratings, or contains controversial content without enough redeeming value to be worth dealing with the media watchdogs, it's likely it'll die a quick death without anyone caring. The most it might get is a sense of confusion that anyone thought the idea would work in the first place.

However, the second is just as intriguing. Most television pilots are poor-to-middling in quality, and this is to be expected: a network wouldn't greenlight a program if they thought it was terrible. But occasionally, a pilot episode manages to find its way to the general public and is beloved by many who watch it... leaving audiences wondering how a show with such an awesome premise, brilliant writing, superb casting, and/or just an overall excellent execution got rejected.

Podcasts such as Dead Pilots Society and Canceled Too Soon are good starting places if you wish to dive into the world of rejected pilots.

See also The Shelf of Movie Languishment, Poorly Disguised Pilot, Failed Pilot Episode and Audience-Alienating Premise; compare to Orphaned Series. Not to be confused with One-Scene Wonder. For characters who appear in only one episode of a series, see One-Shot Character. Some series make it past the first episode but not much further; that goes under Short-Runners. The Other Wiki has a pair of articles on the subject (one covering shows cancelled after one episode, and another covering shows canceled before even having one airing).

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Examples:

Real Life One Episode Wonders

• 12 Miles of Bad Road, a drama about a Texas matriarch struggling to hold on to her real estate empire.
• 13 13th Avenue, a rejected sitcom pilot starring a young Wil Wheaton who learns that his new neighbours are a witch, a vampire, and a werewolf, while the building superintendent is a troll.
• 17th Precinct was a show pitched to NBC by Ron Moore (featuring Jamie Bamber, James Callis and Tricia Helfer, who had all starred in Battlestar Galactica (2003) reboot) following a police department in a world where magic took the place of technology. A pilot was produced but not picked up, though it was leaked onto v for a brief while in December 2011. Bamber left his role on Law & Order: UK to work on this pilot.
• Thirtysomething(else): A sequel to thirtysomething, with emphasis on the original cast's children — the new generation of thirtysomethings.
• In early 2010, 1000 Ways to Die aired a spinoff named 1000 Ways To Lie, based around common scams. Spike TV actually had 13 episodes filmed but chose not to air them after the pilot was so poorly received. The pilot only aired once on television.
• Acting Sheriff - a 1991 failed sitcom about Brett McCord, a B-movie star who becomes a sheriff in a small town.
• The Adventures of Superpup: At the end of the fifth season of The Adventures of Superman, star George Reeves was found dead. The producers of the show attempted to cash in on this... by filming an After Show pilot on the same sets with little people wearing giant dog masks, using character names such as "Bark Bent" and "Puppy Bite".
• The After: Failed pilot movie for Amazon streaming created by Chris Carter about a group of strangers trying to survive the aftermath of an unexplained apocalyptic event.
• Agent Smarty Pants: An animated short about a boy who becomes the accidental owner of a special military-grade pair of “smart pants”, which develop a life of their own and take control of his lower body, forcing him to deal with yet another issue on top of his normal teenage problems.
• The Alan King Show, a pilot for a sitcom about a businessman who decides to quit Wall Street, and teach business at his old college - which happen to be the same college his daughter is attending.
• Alexander the Great (1968), a TV show about the legendary warlord starring William Shatner and Adam West. The pilot was so bad that the network didn't put it on the air until several years after filming it, and then only because they were hoping to cash in on the fame the leads had gathered from their recently cancelled shows, Star Trek and Batman (1966). It didn't work.
• The Amazing Screw-On Head: 2006 animated pilot based on a one-off comic by Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. Featured Paul Giamatti as a Steampunk robot who fights paranormal forces at the behest of the Lincoln administration, with David Hyde-Pierce as his arch nemesis, Emperor Zombie. The Sci-Fi Channel actually had an online poll to gauge interest, but despite being very well-received it somehow never made it, possibly due to low numbers (ignoring how hard it is to promote a one-off pilot or attract word-of-mouth).
• America 2100 - Two stand-up comedians are accidently put into suspended animation. They awake at the dawn of the 22nd century to find the world run by a supercomputer with the voice and old jokes of fellow comedian Sid Caesar.
• Anchorwoman: A reality show in which Lauren Jones, best known for her role as a WWE diva, gets a role on a local TV news station, acts like an airhead, and competes with an equally pretentious rival. Hilarity Ensues.
• Angora Napkin: An animated pilot about a Cloud Cuckoolander girl band, made in 2009 for Teletoon's late night program "Teletoon at Night". It was Canadian comic artist Troy Little's attempt to turn his comic into an adult-oriented Quirky Work. When it failed, Little continued to make Angora Napkin as a Web Comic and a series of graphic novels.
• Annihilator, a 1986 Made-for-TV Movie where a newspaperman has to save the world from humanoid killer robots, one of whom is made to look like his girlfriend.
• Aquaman: 2006 superhero show from Smallville creators Al Gouch and Miles Millar, though not intended as a spin-off. Was called Mercy Reef in the development phase. The pilot is available for purchase on iTunes and is recapped here. Justin Hartley played Aquaman in the pilot as opposed to Alan Ritchson in Smallville. When it didn't get picked up, Hartley went on to play Smallville's Green Arrow.
• The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire - a 1981 TV movie which tells the story of Prince Toran who is searching for the sorcerer who can help him claim his birthright and avenge his father's murder, accompanied by a thief and an enchantress.
• Archie - a failed pilot for a sitcom about Archie Andrews.
• The Asphalt Cowboy - a Made-for-TV Movie about the exploits of Max Caulpepper, the owner-operator of the Los Angeles-based Caulpepper Security Service, who was also a rancher and the widowed father of daughters Rosie, Molly and Meg.
• Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos was a particularly notorious case. Animal copulation, accidental nudity, and a man lifting a barbell with his...equipment were among the highlights. Midway through the show, the owner of the network called and told them "Get that shit off the air!" It halted mid-showing (in Sydney, earlier elsewhere in Australia, and it wasn't shown at all in Perth) and was replaced with a Cheers rerun (it did air in full eventually, albeit edited for community standards, in 2008). Most of the people involved with the production were immediately fired.
• Badlands: 2005: Failed pilot from 1985 about a U.S. Marshal and his robot partner who have to escort a group of mail order brides through postapocalyptic America.
• Baffled! - a failed pilot starring Leonard Nimoy as a race car driver who gets mysterious psychic abilities from an accident.
• Barstool Van Talk: a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of Barstool Sports' popular comedic podcast Pardon My Take, which aired in late-night on ESPN2 on October 18, 2017. Although its premiere episode wasn't controversial (the podcast had actually developed a more distinctive style than the rest of the site, which is largely dependent on being a Refuge in Audacity), and actually didn't do too badly a for late-night time slot on ESPN2, ESPN employees had been hesitant to associate themselves with a website that had attracted controversy for having published misogynistic or otherwise offensive articles (including remarks insulting one of ESPN's prominent female personalities), and pulled the plug the following week. It wasn't their first foray into TV, as the site's Barstool Rundown show did a televised version on Comedy Central, live from Houston during the week of Super Bowl LI.
• Bates Motel (1987), a Made-for-TV Movie meant as a pilot for a horror anthology series spin off of the movie Psycho.
• Battletoads, an animated pilot based on the video game which aired in 1993.
• Beane's of Boston was the US version of Are You Being Served?.
• Being Human began life as one of a series of pilots aired on BBC3 in 2008, with the intention that the best-received one would be turned into a full series. Therefore, all the others were One-Episode Wonders:
  • Phoo Action, a comic book adaptation about a superhero duo fighting mutant terrorists. It was actually chosen as the one to be made into a series, but cancelled before shooting began (and replaced with Being Human) when the BBC decided that scripts weren't good enough.
  • The Things I Haven't Told You, a mystery drama.
  • Mrs In-Betweeny, a comedy about orphaned children taken in by their transgender aunt.
  • West 10 LDN and Dis/Connected, teen dramas.
• The Bellinis, a failed pilot for a show about a widower and his dead wife's family, who like to believe they were big time mafiosos despite having been on the edges of organised crime.
• Bermuda Triangle - a 1996 Made-for-TV Movie about a family who finds itself stranded on an island in the "27th dimension" with other castaways. It was negatively compared to Gilligan's Island.
• Bermuda Triangle - no relation to the one above, this was a 2019 pilot in which a family’s tropical vacation is interrupted by a violent storm which capsizes their boat and lands them in a strange land filled with danger and mystery.
• BiffoVision, the sketch show by ex-Digitiser man Paul Rose, was shunted to "youth" channel BBC Three, as it took on the form of a decidedly twisted kids' show...who chose not to pick up the programme as it appealed to too old a market.
• Bill and Martha - a 1964 comedy starring movie stars William Bendix and Martha Raye as a married couple. CBS pulled the show because Bendix was in poor health, and the network would rather not air the show than air it only to have him die mid-production.
• Blackjack: 1998 TV movie intended as a pilot for a TV series, starring Dolph Lundgren as a former U.S. Marshal who has to protect high profile figures and is phobic of the color white.
• Bossy - a comedy starring Lucy Liu as a diva boss with no patience for working parents until she adopts a baby and has a change of heart, casting her mother-of-three assistant as an unlikely mentor and upending the office dynamics.
• Breaking News, a one hour drama about a struggling 24-hour cable news network.
• Brides - a vampire soap opera starring Gina Torres, Katherine Reis and Erin Richards as the titular immortal women, unveiling the things they're prepared to do to maintain wealth, prestige and their nontraditional family.
• The Brotherhood of Justice: a 1986 TV Movie about a group of high school students who decide to become underground vigilantes named "The Brotherhood of Justice". Notable for being an early role of Keanu Reeves'.
• Bubsy, which nobody would've ever seen if not for the fact that it was packaged with the Windows version of one of the Bubsy games. Rob Paulsen leaves it off his résumé nowadays...
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Animated Series. It never even made it to the full pilot stage, but the link is to the 4-minute promo on YouTube. It features almost the entire original cast (except Sarah Michelle Gellar; they got Buffy's voice from the video game instead).
• Bunco - starring Tom Selleck as a member of the "Bunco" squad, the squad in charge of nabbing con men, cheats, and swindlers.
• The Carol Channing Show - the failed pilot for a series starring Carol Channing.
• Catalina C-Lab, a failed 1982 pilot which follows the exploits of the oceanographers attached to the Gamma Foundation, a marine research center.
• Chameleon - a 1998 Made-for-TV Movie about Cham, a genetically created being known as a "Sub" who serves as a killer for the IBI, a government agency, who defies her boss and goes on the run with the son of one of her victims.
• Channel 99 - a failed sitcom about a high-powered LA TV executive who returns to her hometown after being released from a mental institution in order to try to revive the local TV station which is struggling in the ratings.
• Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe, a 2009 show about video games hosted by Charlie Brooker.
• The Charmkins, an animated television film based on an early 1980s toyline by Hasbro.
• Cheat Slayer is a manga example, as it was cancelled after a single published chapter due to the sheer amount of backlash against it (it was meant to be a satire of isekai series, but the very unsubtle attempts at Take Thats weren't at all appreciated by fans or creators of other isekai works).
• Chinese Burn, a BBC sitcom about three young Chinese women living in London. It was promoted as challenging stereotypes about Chinese people; but its stereotyped, arguably racist humour put audiences off. The channel was also criticised for investing in this show (whose creators were Chinese expats living in the UK) rather than new work by British Chinese writers. The negative response to the show meant that it wasn't commissioned for a full series.
• The Chop was a British competition show about carpentry on Sky History, which got cancelled after a single episode after numerous complaints about one of the contestants' facial tattoos having associations with white nationalism.
• Christmas In Tattertown, a failed animated pilot from 1988 about a girl who falls into a world of lost items where her doll comes to life and tries to run away
• Clarissa Now was a proposed spinoff (on CBS) of Clarissa Explains It All where the now-adult Clarissa moved to New York City to work as an intern for a local newspaper, all the while dealing with demanding bosses and harsh New Yorkers while staying ever optimistic. While the success of shows like Fuller House and the Popularity Polynomial of 90's Nickelodeon shows in The New '10s prove that Clarissa Now may have been ahead of its time, Cracked explains that the main reason CBS passed on the show was because Now was set to air mere months after Explains It All, and the latter show's target audience hadn't had a chance to grow up with Clarissa.
• The Clone Master - a 1978 TV Movie about a scientist who clones himself many times, each with a different personality, though each clone has roughly the same knowledge and memories as the scientist himself.
• The Clumbsys, a failed pilot for a sitcom about a family where every single member was, well, clumsy.
• Coasttocoast, an hour-long sitcom about two airline stewardesses.
• Co-Ed Fever: 1979 CBS sitcom set at an all-female college that had just started to admit male students made on the heels of Animal House's success.
• Collector's Item: A 1957 Made-for-TV Movie starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre as two antiques appraisers who lock horns with a thief who seems to be very interested in the collection they are appraising.
• Condor: A Made-for-TV Movie starring Ray Wise as a police officer in futuristic LA who is paired with a female robot partner in order to track down and stop an escaped criminal mastermind.
• Constant Payne: 2001 animated pilot for Nickelodeon. Similar in concept to Jonny Quest, it followed the Payne family, consisting of an adventurous super-inventor and his daughter. There are several reasons why it didn't get aired, most notably the unfortunate timing of the September 11th terrorist attacks, when one of the action scenes sees a blimp nearly crashes into a twin-towered building. Creator Micah Wright's attempts to unionize the studio under the Writer's Guild of America instead of The Animation Guild, when the studio was already in the midst of talks with the latter, also resulted in bad blood that killed all hopes of the network greenlighting the project.
• Crash Island - a 1981 TV Movie about a group of children and young teens on the way to a swim meet who get stranded on an unknown island when the plane they're on crashes into the ocean.
• Crisis - a failed 1968 pilot about the Crisis Center Board of Health and Welfare, who had to try and prevent violent crimes from happening.
• Crossroad Avenger - a western series directed by Ed Wood about the "Tucson Kid," a gunslinging insurance investigator who travels to any town where a suspicious insurance claim has appeared.
• Curbside - a pilot produced in 1999 by Nickelodeon for an Animated Anthology series featuring Terrytoons characters with the framing device consisting of a talk show hosted by Heckle and Jeckle. For reasons unknown, the pilot was never aired, let alone picked up for a series.
• Daddy-O - a failed pilot about an actor who plays a Bumbling Dad in the titular Show Within a Show and wants to quit due to his poor acting skills and disinterest in the show, while his boss tries to persuade him to stay.
• Dad's a Dog - To the embarrassment of his children, the only work a former TV star can get is on a sitcom (also called Dad's a Dog), where he performs the voice of a man who is magically transformed into a dog.
• Danger Team - A ball of space goop crash-lands in a sculptor's studio. Naturally, he molds the goop into three figurines. The figurines come to life, but only the artist can see them. The artist and the goop men team up to go fight crime.
• Danny and the Mermaid - Danny is an oceanography student failing all of his classes, until he meets a mermaid who, along with her talking dolphin friend, helps Danny get better grades by escorting him all over the ocean and tutoring him on sea life.
• Dark Horse - a drama following Alex Irving, a passionate Indigenous woman, on her unconventional journey into politics.
• Day One, an end of the world drama about a worldwide cataclysm that destroys modern infrastructure.
• Daytona Beach: A Made-for-TV Movie about a cop/lifeguard/race-car driver who is dating an Air Force pilot who dreams of being an astronaut.
• Dear Diary: Dreamworks production that eventually went on to win the 1996 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.
• The Decorator - a failed pilot starring Bette Davis as a respected but struggling interior decorator from a wealthy background who moves in with some of her clients in order to meet their specific needs, and tends to become friends with the families and get drawn into their personal problems.
• The Debbie King Show: a late-night show hosted by Debbie King of Quizmania fame for the British "all phone-in game shows" channel ITV Play and premiering 5 March 2007, it was billed as being a mix between a phone-in quiz show and a news satire show with viewer calls. Earlier that same day, however, ITV announced that the ITV Play channel would be suspended indefinitely as part of an audit of the broadcaster's use of premium-rate phone lines. Somehow, they still went on with the show. Neither ITV Play, or The Debbie King Show, ever returned.
• Defenders of Dynatron City was a tie-in to an NES game and a comic book series in an effort to make a new superhero franchise. Despite the ambition, the show went nowhere beyond the pilot, the comic only lasted six issues, and the NES game tanked commercially and critically.
• The Dictator, a sitcom starring Christopher Lloyd as a deposed Caribbean tinpot dictator living in a laundromat.
• Dick Tracy - a failed pilot starring the character of the same name.
• Dirk Derby, a pilot by Steve Oedekerk (best known for creating The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius). The pilot was released on Vimeo but nothing ever came out of it.
• Dr. Strange - a 1978 TV movie based on the character of the same name.
• A Dog's Life, a 1979 pilot by Norman Lear about people dressed as dogs making lame puns.
• Dorbees: Making Decisions, a 1998 shameless cash-in on the CG Christian kid's video craze started by VeggieTales. It became infamous for lacking the heart, soul, and, y'know, Christian stories that made VeggieTales stand the test of time, as well as the character designs and animation being some of the most static and ugly creatures ever seen in animation. If you're curious, you can watch the entire video here.
• Dragon's Heaven was one single OVA based on an old, highly obscure manga, but with some of the coolest mechs ever and an awesome soundtrack, it's a crying shame that nothing more ever came of it.
• The Elvira Show: Failed sitcom pilot from 1993 built around Cassandra Peterson's Horror Host character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
• Emily's Reasons Why Not: A comedy starring Heather Graham, based on a novel of the same name. It was intended to be the anchor of ABC's post-football-season Monday night lineup in 2006, and failed miserably, getting cancelled after its only airing in January despite heavy promotion during the fall of 2005. It was said ABC bought the series without seeing a script. It was cancelled so quickly that magazines that came out the next week were stuck running feature stories promoting a show that was no longer on the air because their press deadlines came before the airing of the one episode.
• Epic - a romantic anthology series taking place in a Disney-like Enchanted Forest that reinvents fairy tales a la Once Upon a Time.
• Ethel Is an Elephant - a failed sitcom about a NY photographer who shares his home with an abandoned circus elephant.
• Evel Knievel, an unsold TV Pilot featuring Sam Elliott as motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, who travelled around the country getting into adventures and fighting bad guys.
• Everything Happens to Mel - a failed pilot for a half-hour musical sitcom starring Mel Torme.
• The Exo-Man - a failed pilot about a physics professor who, after being paralysed by hit-men, creates an exo-suit that revitalises his limbs and gives him super strength in order to fight crime.
• Familia Tipo only had one episode ever produced, and it was released on a rare VHS rather than being aired on network television. This is likely because of the show's cheap animation and it being a blatant clone of The Simpsons.
• Fearless was officially placed on the 2003 Fall schedule by The WB, but later delayed to midseason (One Tree Hill appeared in its place) and then canceled without ever being broadcast. If you're curious, the pilot can be seen on YouTube in its entirety.
• Flavio the Goat - A 2007 animated short about an Italian goat who works as a dishwasher at a pizzeria, and longs to become a famous inventor.
• Ford Nation: Against the backdrop of Toronto mayor Rob Ford's crack cocaine scandal, conservative cable news network Sun News gave him and his brother Doug (the future Premier of Ontario) an hour-long current events show to replace their recently cancelled radio show. While its premiere got high ratings, it took five hours to record and eight to edit, due to Ford's inexperience with TV - and it was supposed to be a daily show. At which point, Sun decided to cut their losses, as it would be too expensive to get the episodes turned around. The brothers subsequently claimed that Ford Nation was always intended as a one-off special. Meanwhile, Sun News went off the air just over a year later.
• Friend Me, a failed sitcom about a website similar to Groupon.
• The Fuzz Brothers - A Made-for-TV Movie about two black police officer brothers, who battle crime in a run-down section of Los Angeles.
• Fuzzbucket - A Made-for-TV Movie, aired as an episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, about an invisible creature who befriends a 12-year-old boy who is the only person who can see him.
• Generation X, a 1996 Made-for-TV Movie based on the comic book of the same name.
• In 2000, PAX aired a "sneak preview" of a Bible-based quiz show called Genesis, hosted by Jim McKrell, which never got picked up. More info, and a link to the entire episode, can be found here.
• Ghost of a Chance - a comedy about a widow who remarries, then finds herself being haunted by the ghost of her first husband.
• The Ginger Rogers Show - a 1963 pilot starring Ginger Rogers as twins, Elizabeth and Margaret Harcourt, who were Polar Opposite Twins - one was a serious writer and the other a less serious fashion designer.
• Global Frequency: A 2005 Mark Burnett adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic book series, starring Michelle Forbes of Star Trek fame and scripted by John Rogers (Leverage, Jackie Chan Adventures). There was a change of network management while the pilot was in production, which is almost always death to a pilot even if the new executives like the project — and these didn't. Several months after the project was axed, the pilot was leaked onto BitTorrent networks to tremendous acclaim; rather than recognize this as a sign of the show's potential, the network used it as grounds to deny the pilot a proper airing or DVD release on the grounds that anybody who might have wanted to see it had already.
• Only one episode of the Animated Adaptation of the Gogo's Crazy Bones toy series was ever released, and even then it was only released to YouTube. Uploads of this one episode were later taken down due to backlash from Gogo's fans; the episode is now extremely tough to come by as a result.
• Good Against Evil, an 1977 Made-for-TV Movie in which a writer teams up with an exorcist to battle Satan, who has chosen the writer's girlfriend to be the mother of the Anti-Christ.
• The Greatest American Hero: a remake of the series of the same name, starring a female protagonist.
• The Groovenians: A 2002 half-hour CGI television special by Kenny Scharf that was nominated for an Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject.
• Groove Squad: A 2002 installment of the DIC Movie Toons series focusing on three cheerleaders who gain superpowers and fight the evil Dr. Nathaniel Nightingale.
• The Grubbs, an American version of British sitcom The Grimleys, about a vulgar but good-hearted working class family.
• Head of the Family: a pilot that featured Carl Reiner as the Head Comedy Writer for "The Alan Sturdy Show", and showed both his home and work life. The pilot was rejected by CBS and burned off as a one time "comedy special". Producer Sheldon Leonard saw it, completely recast it, changed 'Alan Sturdy' to 'Alan Brady', and created a five year hit known as The Dick Van Dyke Show.
• Heat Vision and Jack: 1999 comedy/sci-fi show starring Jack Black as Jack Austin, a former astronaut exposed to inappropriate levels of solar radiation, granting him super-intelligence whenever the sun is out. Since NASA wishes to take out his brain, he's on the run with his friend Heat Vision, a friend who has been hit by a laser beam and turned into a talking motorcycle (Voiced by Owen Wilson). They travel the countryside chased by NASA mercenary Ron Silver (as himself), blocked at every turn...by adventure! Directed by Ben Stiller, and created by Dan Harmon, who gave the leads (Black and Wilson) a guest appearance on a show of his that did get picked up.
• Heavens to Betsy, in which Dolly Parton played an egotistical country singer who had died and was trying to earn her wings to get into Heaven.
• Heil Honey I'm Home!: A 1990 British comedy starring caricatures of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun who live in matrimonial bliss until they become neighbors to a Jewish couple.
• Hellinger's Law: A 1981 crime-drama pilot about a flamboyant criminal lawyer.
• Hieroglyph: a Fox drama of intrigue among ancient Egyptian royalty (think Game of Thrones with pyramids) that was ordered straight to series, then cancelled after only one episode was shot. You can see the trailer here.
• Higher Ground - A retired F.B.I. Agent played by John Denver becomes a bush pilot in Alaska.
• High Risk - six former circus performers hit the road and help people solve their problems...for money.
• Hollyweird, a comedy/horror hybrid about friends solving crimes in Los Angeles.
• Hyouman and Jaguarman, a pair of unaired pilots produced in 1967 which served as alternate takes for a toku superhero character by P Productions.
• I-Man - A Made-for-TV Movie, aired as an episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, about a man who acquires the ability to heal instantly and survive any injury or toxin when he is exposed to an alien gas.
• Indict and Convict - A 1974 TV Movie about a prosecutor who must try his friend, a deputy district attorney, who has been charged with murdering his wife and her lover.
• Infiltrator - A scientist's experiment conveys him to another lab where his body is fused with a mechanism that can't be easily extracted, as its co-creator is holding the device's plans for ransom. Aired on CBS Summer Playhouse.
• In the Dark, a game show produced by Meridian and hosted by Julian Clary, was set to run on The WB in 1996. Although a promo was aired, the show itself was abruptly replaced by a rerun of The Wayans Bros.. It was remade for Germany the following year as the one-off Zappenduster.
• The Invisible Woman - no relation to The Fantastic Four character, the pilot starred Bob Denver as an absent-minded chemist who creates an invisibility potion which is drunk by his niece, an investigative reporter who uses her new powers to crack stories.
• Island City is a 1994 TV movie about a post-apocalyptic society in which an immortality serum has turned a huge percentage of the world's population into mutated brutes. The remains of human civilization live in isolated city-states like the titular Island City.
• The IT Crowd, an American adaptation of the hit British comedy series.
• It's Up to You - a 1961 failed pilot for a game show wherein a team of "Junior Achievers" would pitch product ideas and then try to guess which one of two mystery guests was either a corporate manager or a movie star.
• The Jake Effect - a failed pilot about a successful lawyer who has grown disdainful of his job, decides to quit and joins a program where professionals from other fields become teachers.
• Jake's Journey - a 1988 TV Movie in which a normal teenager is transported to a Monty Pythonesque medieval fantasy land, where an odd knight takes him on a quest to rescue a princess.
• The Jane Powell Show - a failed pilot starring Jane Powell as K.C. McCay, an actress-singer who impulsively marries a math professor and then struggles to fit into his campus life at a small California town.
• Jane the Novela, a spinoff of Jane the Virgin. Had the show gone to series, it would be an anthology series with each season based on a different novel Jane was writing (the show was also narrated by Jane herself).
• Jeffrey Cat: Claw and Order - an animated pilot about a cat detective who solves a case involving an innocent dog that has been accused of attacking a neighbor.
• Jerks of All Trades, a series The Three Stooges planned for ABC in 1949. It was to feature the Stooges trying their hand at a different profession each week, whereupon their trademark hilarity would ensue. It never went beyond the pilot stage due to Columbia threatening to cancel the trio's short subjects contract and sue them if they tried to sell the series — a stipulation in the contract said that they couldn't perform in a TV series that could compete with their theatrical shorts. As a compromise, Columbia sold a package of 30 shorts to ABC, leading to the first-ever broadcast of Three Stooges shorts on television.
• The Jersey Odysseys was a series planned by James Rolfe in the early 2000s. It was to be a The Twilight Zone-esque anthology series in which each episode was based on a real urban legend from New Jersey, inspired by the magazine Weird NJ. The pilot, "Legend of the Blue Hole," was released in 2004, but Rolfe ended up putting the series on indefinite hold because The Angry Video Game Nerd, another series of his, became far more popular than he had expected and he has been busy ever since working on that. However, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie featured a plot rooted in an urban legend and was filmed at several locations found using Weird California, a spinoff of Weird NJ, so in a way the film is a followup to The Jersey Odysseys in addition to being an adaptation of AVGN.
• Judge Dee - A failed pilot for a TV series based on the books of the same name.
• Just Deserts - a Made-for-TV Movie about a dead lawyer who dishes out karmic punishments to those who deserve it, like a womaniser who is turned into a woman as punishment.
• Just Good Friends - a failed pilot about two aspiring journalists who meet and fall in love with the same woman, an aspiring photographer.
• K-9000, a 1991 sci-fi crime TV movie starring Chris Mulkey, revolving around a hard-nosed policeman who is implanted with a microchip allowing him to communicate with a German Shepherd with a computer in its brain to help it track and capture criminals. The film was intended as a pilot for an unsold television series loosely based on the 1989 film K-9.
• K-9 and Company: the first and, for a long while, only Doctor Who TV Spin-Off, starring Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith alongside her own version of K-9. The pilot aired as a Christmas special 1981 and featured a silly plot involving a local coven. It probably would've gone to series at the time, but the then-recently appointed BBC One controller Alan Hart opposed the concept. Twenty-six years later, Sarah Jane returned in a second and considerably more successful spinoff series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.
• Keys - a 1994 TV Movie about a pathologist/helicopter pilot and her ex-con mechanic.
• Korgoth of Barbaria: 2006 animated pilot for a ridiculously over-the-top parody of Conan the Barbarian and works of that kind, created by Aaron Springer. Originally said to have been picked up by the [adult swim] lineup in 2007, but later said to be canceled with nary an episode other than the pilot.
• Law and Order - a 1976 failed pilot about an Irish-American New York police chief who is married to an ex-prostitute and handles public affairs and his own family problems.
• Lawless: 1997 FOX action series starring NFL star Brian Bosworth as a private detective.
• L.A.X. 2194: A 1994 Made-for-TV Movie about baggage handlers (one of whom happened to be an android) at Los Angeles International Airport in the year 2194.
• Li'l Abner - a failed pilot for a sitcom about the misadventures of the famous comic strip character.
• Little Amy - a failed pilot about the exploits of a young girl.
• Lizzie and Sarah, a BBC comedy pilot aired in 2010. It was expected to be part of a series that would become a hit Black Comedy in the vein of Nighty Night (a vehicle for Julia Davis, who wrote and starred in Lizzie and Sarah) but was aired in a poor time slot and then not picked up for a full series, despite fans petitioning for it.
• Locke & Key had a pilot filmed in 2011 for Fox, but it was not picked up for a series.
• Lookwell: 1991 detective comedy series written and produced by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel. Stars Adam West as a washed-up TV action star who, after being legally deputized at the peak of his career, decides to fight crime, which he does ineptly. The two writers were reportedly happy they didn't get picked up, feeling they had exhausted all good material on the pilot and no idea what to do for further stories.
• The Long Hunt of April Savage, which was about a homesteader whose wife, daughter and son are killed by a band of renegades in 1871. Savage has vowed to track down the eight men responsible, one of whom is his own brother, even though he knows they have fled to the ends of the Earth.
  • The pilot was produced by Gene Roddenberry while he and Desilu Studios were waiting for NBC to decide the fate of their other series: a little thing called Star Trek. However, Roddenberry hadn't created it - his friend Sam Rolfe had thought it up, but he was unavailable to produce it. Rolfe blamed Roddenberry's lack of interest in the pilot (Roddenberry wouldn't have been involved had it gone to series) for its failure to sell.
• Lost Flight - a 1970 TV Movie that can best be described as an adult version of Lord of the Flies, the plot revolved around the captain of a downed airliner who must help his crew and passengers survive on a deserted jungle island in the midst of a power struggle.
• Lost in Oz: 2002 series sequel to The Wizard of Oz, written by David Hayter, screenwriter of X-Men and X2: X-Men United and voice actor of Solid Snake.
• Madame Sin - a failed pilot starring Bette Davis as the ruthless head of a secret espionage organization dedicated to conquering the world.
• Maggie: a failed pilot from 1960 for a proposed sit-com concerning the misadventures that occur when a sophisticated husband-and-wife team of actors and their clever teen-age daughter move from Manhattan to suburban Connecticut and immediately clash with their new neighbors.
• Mandrake - a 1979 TV Movie based on the character of the same name, in which Mandrake and Lothar come to the aid of an amusement-park owner who is being blackmailed by a madman who is killing the park's customers until he gets his money.
• The Man with the Power - a failed pilot about a man who discovers he has telekinetic powers due to being a Half-Human Hybrid (his father was an alien). With the help of a college professor, he learns to harness his gifts for the betterment of mankind.
• Mayor, a 2004 comedy series from Adam Sandler about a 19-year-old man who finds himself elected mayor of a small town in New Hampshire.
• Me and Lee? was a pilot for a proposed 2007 show featuring Jamie Kennedy as a man who gets his injured back fixed up by none other than Lee Majors who has researched bionics since he was in The Six Million Dollar Man and, apparently, also become somewhat creepy if not evil. Looking at the linked portion, one can probably see why it never actually saw the light of day.
• The Melting Pot: 1975 BBC production. Two stereotyped illegal-immigrants from Pakistan (one of whom played by Spike Milligan) arrive in England via Amsterdam and move into lodgings run by an stereotyped Irishman. Hilarity Ensues.
• Members Only, an unaired comedy-drama television series centring on the powerful and wealthy Holmes family, owners of Connecticut's most exclusive clubs.
• Men of the Dragon, a 1974 TV Movie about three martial arts experts who find themselves battling white slavers and kung-fu killers.
• Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is a video game example that was very well received. Furthermore, it’s studio was in the middle laying out a sequel. This got left unfinished once a certain company took it over.
• Metropolis - An American adaption of a British miniseries of the same name, with Michael E. Rodgers playing a US counterpart to James Purefoy's character Nathan. Only one episode was filmed, but was never picked up by ABC and fell into obscurity. A pilot for another US adaption of the miniseries was filmed and pitched to The CW, but that too was never picked up.
• Microcops - Two microscopic cops from outer space come to Earth in pursuit of an equally tiny intergalactic criminal mastermind. To move around the planet, the tiny cops attach their tiny spaceship to people, dogs, and birds.
• Mind Control, a failed Game Show pilot broadcast as a "special" on Citytv, built around a series of physical challenges incorporating elements controlled by measuring a contestant's focus.
• Jennifer Saunders re-assembled the main cast of Absolutely Fabulous to play different characters in Mirrorball. The classic slapstick and the satire were all there, but Saunders traded in her Rich Bitch Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist and her Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense friends, for a Giftedly Bad down-on-her-luck actress and her more sympathetic band of Starving Artists. Displeased with the final product, Saunders elected to recycle the central plotline - her character facing menopause - into a fourth series of Absolutely Fabulous.
• Mission Control, a failed pilot for a workplace ensemble set in 1962, examining what would happen when a strong woman butted heads with a macho astronaut in the race to land on the moon.
• Mockingbird Lane is a single-episode Continuity Reboot of The Munsters. The episode was shown as a Hallowe'en special rather than as the pilot of the intended weekly series. Writer/producer Bryan Fuller later cast his Grandpa Munster - comedian Eddie Izzard - as an addled serial killer on Hannibal.
• The Modifyers: A 2007 animated pilot created by Lynne Naylor and Chris Reccardi of The Ren & Stimpy Show fame. The show was originally going to be on Nickelodeon, but the network rejected it. Soon after, the pilot was then pitched to Cartoon Network, only to be rejected there as well. Despite rumors that Disney Channel would pick it up next, it never truly caught on though it still has a small cult following. The pilot can be found here or, in case the link dies out, as a download.
• Mr. Dugan, a late '70s sitcom about a freshman black congressman.
• MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups: Originally intended to be a series bringing rock and rap artists together for collaborations. The first mash-up, between Jay-Z and Linkin Park, was a huge success, and the resulting Collision Course album sold 2 million copies and won a Grammy. However, MTV never followed it up. Ludacris and Sum 41 were rumored to be the subjects of the next episode at one point, and they even appeared on Saturday Night Live together as musical guests to ostensibly promote said collaboration, but it never came into fruition.
• Mulholland Dr. started as a pilot for ABC. When it didn't get picked up, creator David Lynch added a massive Mind Screw ending and it was released to theaters as a movie.
• Munroe - a failed pilot about a military dog.
• Murder Police, an unaired adult animated sitcom co-created by Family Guy executive producer David A. Goodman and animator Jason Ruiz. The pilot was a satire of television cop shows centred on a dedicated but inept detective and his colleagues at a twisted city precinct.
• The Mysterious Two - A man must stop two popular televangelists...because they are actually evil aliens who are brainwashing humanity in order to take over the planet.
• National Parks - a small group of elite NPS agents solve the crimes that occur in national parks.
• Never Again, a failed pilot about three yuppies who lived in neighbouring condos. Notable for starring Judge Reinhold Playing Against Type as a sexist.
• Next Caller, a failed comedy about a very unlikely pair of satellite radio disc jockeys who are forced to share the microphone for a relationship call-in show in New York City.
• Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Failed 1998 Pilot Movie starring David Hasselhoff as the Marvel Comics character.
• Northstar - a failed pilot about an astronaut who is zapped by a solar disturbance and gains superhuman powers that are triggered by sunlight - but too much direct sunlight will kill him, so he has to wear special sunglasses.
• The Nut House, a live-action project from animation legend Jay Ward, was a series of rapid-fire, burlesque-like dramatizations that spoof the American scene (much like the later Laugh-In). Hear a little bit about it here.
• N.Y. Mounted - A Made-for-TV Movie in which a wisecracking, streetwise veteran cop is reassigned to the Mounted Division, where his new partner is a rodeo rider, drafted in for his experience with horses.
• The Orphan and the Dude - a failed pilot about a flashy streetwise huckster and an orphaned garage mechanic who share an apartment in California.
• Original Cast Album - Intended as a documentary series that focused on the making of "Broadway Cast Recording" albums, to be directed by D.A. Pennebaker, but his clients moved to Hollywood and stopped returning his calls. The pilot, focused on Company, was instead released theatrically and became a cult classic.
• The Orson Welles Show - Orson Welles' attempt to pitch his own series, which would feature adaptations of literary works. It was rejected for being too sophisticated for audiences.
• Out Of The Trees, a 1975 stream-of-conciousness sketch show written by Graham Chapman and Douglas Adams. One episode was made, and was put out on BBC2, with no publicity, opposite Match Of The Day on BBC1. It included "The Private Life of Genghis Khan", which eventually got rewritten as a short story for The Utterly Merry Comic Relief Book, and reached a wider audience in The Salmon of Doubt.
• Over/Under was a USA Network pilot that didn't get picked up but aired as a one-off movie. It was about a disgraced banker and his photographer wife, who have a relationship that is both kinky and messed-up, being forced to downsize from Manhattan to Brooklyn and the banker trying to regain what he lost by becoming a high-end bookie. It wasn't picked up due to USA Network brass thinking that the concept was too dark even as it purposely pursuing darker projects.
• Pauly Shore has a habit of pumping these sort of shows out. His first series, simply titled Pauly, was actually cancelled halfway through the airing with only five episodes produced, with the footage replaced by an apology from the network.
• Peep Show: A pilot for an American remake of the British series starring Johnny Galecki and Josh Meyers was created but never picked up for a full run (one of the main criticisms levelled at it being that it echews the main POV mechanic that the original show is ostensibly named for, which also eliminates the inner monologues of the POV characters, making it a more generic and boring sitcom). It is actually only one of several failed attempts to adapt the series, but seems to be the only one that has a full pilot episode widely available to the public, with another, separate pilot only available as a few short clips found from various sources.
• The People: An adaptation of the SF stories by Zenna Henderson, aired as a TV movie starring William Shatner, about a teacher who travels to a secluded valley and discovers the inhabitants are a group of extraterrestrials with supernatural powers.
• The Phantom - a 1961 TV movie based on the character of the same name.
• Philbert - a failed pilot for a TV series staring William Schallert as cartoonist Griff and his cartoon Philbert, who comes to life.
• Pistol Pete, a single-camera sitcom by Simpsons scribe John Swartzwelder, about an incompetent vaudeville performer being made sheriff of a Wild West town, and his cowardly deputy being the true savior of the day.
• Police Story - Gene Roddenberry wrote and produced this unsold television cop show from 1967 about an elite squad of police detectives that tackle the cities' most important cases. DeForest Kelley played crank forensic detective Greene.
• Poochinski, a 1990 NBC comedy crime series starring Peter Boyle as the titular Chicago police detective who takes in a stray bulldog as his companion, only to be killed while responding to a mugging and then resurrected when his soul floats into the bulldog. Now a talking dog, he partners up with fellow officer George Newbern to track down his killer while engaging in all sorts of canine hi-jinks. The pilot was aired as part of a double feature with Turner and Hooch, then dropped by NBC as the premise had proven too bizarre and unfunny to audiences.
• Poor Devil - a fantasy/comedy starring Sammy Davis Jr. as a demon in service to Satan, portrayed by Christopher Lee.
• The Prosecutors, a courtroom drama about a wheelchair-bound female prosecutor.
• Pryde of the X-Men: Surreal 1989 Kitty Pryde-based animated X-Men adaptation, which laid the ground work for the later series, after a much needed retool. Stan Lee's hyperactive narration takes it to the next level. The inclusion of Dazzler in the main cast and the fact that the historically Canadian Wolverine is depicted as an Awesome Aussie probably didn't help either (and this was before Aussie Hugh Jackman took on the Wolverine role for the 2000's film series).
  • Nowadays, most fans would recognize the show's character designs as those used in Konami's X Men arcade game.
• Puppetman, a pilot created by Jim Henson about a puppeteer for a local kids' TV show who finds himself in the custody of his five-year-old son. It was aired as part of the CBS "Summer Playhouse" in 1987 and can be found in its entirety here.
• The Questor Tapes, a 1974 Made-for-TV Movie created by Gene Roddenberry, about an android with incomplete memory tapes who is searching for his creator and his purpose.
• Quick as a Flash - a 1952 attempt at transferring a radio quiz show to television. It failed due to being ironically slow-paced.
• Quick Brown Fox and Rapid Rabbit, Warner Bros-Seven Arts' Suspiciously Similar Substitutes for Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, were planned to have a series of shorts, but the studio only managed to complete one, Rabbit Stew and Rabbits, Too!, before they folded.
• Rear guard was the American attempt at Dad's Army. Similar fate as nearly all US remakes of UK comedies.
• Rewind starred Scott Baio as someone in his 40s having flashbacks to his college days, and was on Fox's announced schedule at one point, but after Fox saw the pilot, the show was pulled before airing (and Living Single pulled out of an announced hiatus to fill the time slot).
• The American version of Red Dwarf didn't survive past a single pilot episode that never made it to air. Notable for casting Terry Farrell (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) as a female version of Cat, a pre-Frasier Jane Leeves as the computer Holly and Robert Llewellyn reprising his role of Kryten from the original British series. Because of Executive Meddling late in the production, multiple actor recastings and other problems, British series footage had to be used to fill in the holes in the episode. A brand-new higher-quality Kryten suit was made for the pilot which Llewellyn was allowed to keep and re-use in further British seasons following the American cancellation.
  • There were actually two Red Dwarf USA pilots. The first was a full pilot, with Hinton Battle as Cat; the second was more of a five-minute promo reel which mixed scenes from the UK version, the first USA pilot, and some new material (the only appearance of Terry Farrell as Cat is one of these).
• Rex Is Not Your Lawyer was a pilot from NBC featuring David Tennant in the lead role. The show had tremendous buzz as it was Tennant's first series after recently leaving Doctor Who. Despite being co-written by British novelist David Lampson, and a cast including comedy vets such as Saturday Night Live's Jane Curtin and Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor, the pilot never made it to series.
• The Robert Taylor Show - a 1963 drama based on stories from the official files of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. However, the network soon realized that the show's producers hadn’t actually gotten permission from the government to use the department's files, and it was dumped without ever airing.
• The Robinsons: A 2003 Lost In Space remake pilot commissioned by the WB Television Network. The pilot was directed by John Woo and featured multiple changes from the original, such as: the Jupiter 2 being a landing pod instead of a full-fledged ship, one of the Robinsons' sons dying in an attack by aliens, and much younger actors playing Judy and Don Robinson. The show was never picked up, but the sets of the Jupiter 2 were bought for use on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, as the Battlestar Pegasus' command center.
• Roman's Empire, an American adaptation of a British comedy of the same name.
• Ronna and Beverly: 2009 Showtime sitcom based on a live sketch comedy show about two middle aged Jewish women who write a bestselling self-help book. The pilot was written by Jenji Kohan, whom you might know better as the creator of Weeds. When the pilot wasn't picked up, fans of the duo petitioned Showtime to air it, which they did in the dead of a cold December night.
  • This isn't the only Jenji Kohan series to have never gone past the pilot stage. One year later, Epix decided to pass on picking up her pilot Tough Trade due to budget and the company not liking the pilot. It has yet to be leaked.
• Rosie Live (2008), which was Rosie O'Donnell's attempt to revive the Variety Show format.
• Samurai - a 1979 TV Movie about a young San Francisco attorney who becomes a samurai warrior and fights crime at night.
• Sawdust was another pilot that aired as part of CBS Summer Playhouse (on the same night as the previously mentioned Puppetman). It revolved around a man buying a down-on-its-luck circus to the dismay of his family and can be viewed here.
• Scamps, a failed sitcom pilot starring Bob Denver as Oliver Hopkins, a struggling writer who turns his home into a day care center for kids to make extra money for his bills.
• Secret Talents of the Stars: Hosted by John O'Hurley, it was a reality competition where celebrities performed talents that differed from their normal profession. It had George Takei singing country, you just can't say anything more than that, except for the not-so-secret talent Mya went with.
• Septuplets, a sitcom/drama hybrid about 16-year-old septuplets who run an upscale beachfront hotel with their parents.
• Sett på maken, an attempt to make a Norwegian version of Spitting Image. The second episode was scrapped due to the very poor reception of the first. The series was supposed to return after a few weeks, but nothing ever materialized.
• Seven of One was a series of seven pilot episodes, all starring Ronnie Barker. Two were picked up by The BBC (becoming Porridge and Open All Hours) and another by ITV (My Old Man, with Clive Dunn replacing Barker in the lead role). The other four remain as one-shot episodes.
• Similar to the above, Six Dates with Barker was a series of six one-off, half-hour situation comedies. The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town was turned into a serial for the 1976 series of The Two Ronnies, The Odd Job Man became a 1978 film retitled The Odd Job, with Graham Chapman replacing Barker, and The Removals Person was turned into Ronnie Barker's final TV series Clarence. The other three were never picked up.
• Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles, an attempt to keep G.I. Joe going between G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and G.I. Joe Extreme, included a one episode pilot that was released on video with the titular Sgt. Savage, focusing on G.I. Joe finding a soldier with superhuman abilities who was frozen at the end of World War II and revive him, only for him to learn that his archenemy is also still alive. Though Sgt. Savage itself only had the one episode, the character himself went on to be part of Extreme.
• Shangra-La Plaza: Sure, everyone remembers Cop Rock and a few may even remember Hull High but there was a third Random Genre Meets Musical Production created for the 1990-91 season. This unsold pilot, which aired as an episode of the CBS Summer Playhouse, featured employees, customers and family members singing about their lives and times at an outside strip mall with stores like a donut shop. Starring Broadway's Terrance Mann as a grease monkey in the mall's garage.
• The Singles Table, a 2007 sitcom about five 20-somethings who meet at a wedding after they are placed at the titular table for unattached people.
• Snavely was a US pilot for Fawlty Towers that went the same way as their Dad's Army and Are You Being Served? copies: instead of going west, it went south.
• Snip - a sitcom set in a hairdressers.
• Solarman: Failed animated pilot from 1986 about a teenager who uses a solar-powered bracelet given to him by an alien to become a superhero.
• Sorority: MTV pilot about sorority life. Notable here because it featured the television debuts of January Jones and Christina Hendricks.
• McG's American version of Spaced had a pilot filmed, but it never got picked up.
• Spectre: Failed Pilot Movie from 1977 written by Gene Roddenberry about a criminologist and a doctor who team up to investigate the supernatural.
• Star Command: Failed pilot from 1996 about a group of cadets who need to battle against separatist colonies.
• Steel Justice was a bizarre sci-fi action series about a cop in a dystopian future who fights evil with the help of a toy belonging to his dead son, which he turns into monster truck show icon Robosaurus. Only a 90-minute pilot movie made it to air.
• Stranded - a failed pilot about the survivors of an Australia-bound airliner which crash-landed on an uncharted island who create their own little civilization, a la Gilligan's Island.
• Suburban Beat - a 1985 pilot about four suburban housewives who form a neighborhood-watch program which quickly develops into them solving crimes outside their neighborhood.
• Sucker Free City, a 2004 Pilot Movie by Spike Lee aired on Showtime.
• Superboy 1961: A planned prequel series (or possible reboot) to the George Reeves series, The Adventures of Superman, the pilot followed a young Clark Kent as he attempts to thwart a gang of jewel thieves.
• Supetastic 6, a one-off animated special starring the cast of The Naked Brothers Band.
• Surviving Urban Disasters: Documentary show starring Les Stroud of Survivorman fame, showing techniques for how to stay safe during disasters and interviews with survivors.
• Swingin' Together - a failed pilot for a proposed CBS comedy series about the comic misadventures of a band trying to make it big on the music scene.
• Tag Team: Jessie Ventura and Rowdy Roddy Piper play wrestlers drummed out of the business for refusing to take a dive. They then go on to become police officers and fight crime.
• Take Me to Your Leader, an attempt to replicate the success of My Favorite Martian, about the adventures of two aliens from Venus who go into business with an inventor and sell products created for another planet to unsuspecting humans.
• The format of the German police series Tatort resulted in a number of one-episode wonders as a new investigative team set in a different city was tried out but for one reason or another (often other commitments by the lead actor) was cancelled after just one episode. One such case was Diether Krebs (Michael in Ein Herz und eine Seele) who played the deadly serious Kriminalhauptkommissar Nagel from Hanover in 1979, while Klaus Schubert ("Ekel Alfred" himself) played retired Kriminalhauptkommissar Felber in Frankfurt in 1995. Klaus Löwitsch played two such roles in 1982 and 1985, in the first episode he did his character was killed in the line of duty.
• Tarzan in Manhattan - a 1989 TV Movie in which Tarzan goes to New York to rescue his chimpanzee Cheetah, teams up with a cab driver named Jane, and decides to settle down in New York and become a private eye. Tony Curtis played Jane's father.
• Thick and Thin, a sitcom about a formerly overweight woman struggling to maintain a healthier lifestyle despite temptation. The network felt the show was one big fat joke and cancelled it before it aired.
• Time Out for Ginger - a failed pilot about a teenage bobbysoxer on the sports team.
• Tonight in Havana - a failed pilot about a Havana restaurant owner and his partner who get involved in people's problems.
• The Tool Street Gang - an All-CGI Cartoon about the misadventures of a bunch of anthropomorphic tools.
• Triage - a medical drama following a pioneering surgeon, Finley Briar, over three distinct decades at the same hospital.
• The Tribe - a failed pilot centred around the exploits of a group of cavemen.
• Turn-On: A 1969 ABC Sketch Comedy, slated to be a more sexually-charged, political version of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, from the same producers (who claimed that Turn-On was more reflective of their original concept for Laugh-In), which became probably the biggest fiasco in American television history up to that point. Tim Conway (the Special Guest on the single aired episode) recalled the show's cancellation rolling across the country the night it premiered as TV stations towards the west realized what was playing in the east and took preemptive measures. The Denver and Cleveland affiliates failed to return to the show after the first commercial break (a sketch of a woman trying to get a pack of birth control pills out of a vending machine supposedly being the last straw), replacing it with a documentary on gun safety, while other affiliates either banned the episode from airing, or aired the entire episode and never reran it, with ABC refusing to air the second episode (guest-starring Robert Culp) despite it being completed and ready for air. The prolific Hamilton Camp was one of the cast members. The Paley Center in New York has both episodes, and producer George Schlatter uploaded them both to YouTube in 2023.
• The TV Wheel: Another experimental sketch comedy show, this time, created by and starring MST3K's Joel Hodgson. Heavy on the "experimental", but worth a look. It was originally developed for HBO and known as "The X-Box". (No relation to the video game console.)
• Valley Trash - a single-camera comedy following the Harmans, a scrappy, blue-collar family that experiences a major Culture Clash when their 14-year-old daughter gets into a prestigious private high school.
• Varsity U.S.A., a pilot for a show in which Bennett Cerf would go to a different college each week to showcase their varsity entertainment.
• VG Cats: The Animated Series. Technically, it's not even a one-episode wonder as only the first part of the first episode was ever released.
• Videos After Dark - a spin-off of America's Funniest Home Videos that featured clips that were too risque for its parent show—the same concept as Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos. It too was cancelled after one episode, though at least it aired in full.
• Virtuality, which aired on FOX. Written by Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore, was originally intended as a pilot, but was canned preemptively, and the aborted series' pilot aired as a TV movie. The lead of the show, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, got a plum role a couple of years later.
• Ways and Means - A powerful congressional leader who has lost faith in politics finds himself working secretly with an idealistic young congresswoman from the opposing party to subvert the hopelessly gridlocked system he helped create.
• Welcome to Eltingville, an animated adaptation of segments from Evan Dorkin's comic book Dork!, about a group of Staten Island fanboys and their misadventures caused by their obsessions with the kind of things geeks obsess over (comic books, role-playing games, cheesy horror and exploitation flicks, video games, sci-fi and fantasy TV shows, and collectible toys). The pilot adapted the Eisner-winning story "Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett!". [adult swim] rejected the series because they only had money for 15-minute shows and Evan Dorkin wanted the show to be 30 minutes. It has aired occasionally in the early days of [adult swim], but hasn't been seen since.
• Welcome to Tonka Town was a Merchandise-Driven Failed Pilot Episode consisting of Two Shorts set in the titular Tonka Town, which is inhabited by Sentient Vehicle versions of Tonka’s various toy trucks.
• ...Where's Rodney: Failed sitcom pilot from 1990 about a teenager who has the ability to summon Rodney Dangerfield and ask him for advice.
• Which Way to the War?, an ITV sitcom (with all that implies) pilot clearly intended for a full series which was broadcast in the 1990s. It featured a range of stereotypical WWII soldiers of various nationalities (the trailer showed a camp Scotsman saying "I'm not Scotch. I'm Scottish", this apparently being the joke they hoped would reel in interested viewers) along with 1970s-style writing and production values. Never heard from again.
• Who's Whose? was a Game Show hosted by radio host Phil Baker in 1951 for CBS. In it, a celebrity panel interviewed three men to try and determine which woman they were married to. Critics savaged it and it sank without a trace, being replaced by It's News to Me.
• Who's Your Daddy: 2005 FOX reality show involving an adopted woman attempting to pick her real father from a group of impostors. The Raleigh affiliate, WRAZ, pre-empted the show due to the owners considering the show "anti-family" (and controversy from adoption rights organizations). Technically aired as a "special", but was so quite clearly a pilot that it's worth mentioning Fox shelved the remaining five episodes.
• Wilde Things - Frankie Wolfe is a businesswoman with no personal life. When her sister abandons her foster child Quincy, Frankie is forced to decided whether to take him in or cast him back out.
• The Will: 2005 CBS reality show. It centered on the "Benefactor", a multi-millionaire from Arizona named Bill Long. Ten of his friends and relatives competed in a series of challenges to win the right to inherit his "prized possession", a huge Kansas ranch. The series eventually aired in its entirety on FOX Reality Channel.
• Winter Dragon: A 30-minute adaptation of part of The Eye Of The World (the first volume of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series) that appeared on FXX on February 9th, 2015. What makes it interesting is that the TV rights to the Wheel of Time series were set to revert from Universal to The Bandersnatch Group (which is owned by the Robert Jordan estate) on February 11th, which makes the episode look very much like a quick attempt to retain those rights.
• Wishman, a Made-for-TV Movie about a scientist who saves a genetic experiment from being dissected, then goes on the run with his wife in order to protect the creature.
• NBC's 2011 Wonder Woman, which was quietly canned after receiving hugely unfavorable feedback from test audiences. The incomplete pilot was leaked onto the Internet, which allowed fans to see precisely why it was savaged. Wonder Woman is a violent vigilante who tortures a crook for information so she can slander Elizabeth Hurley and then goes home to curl up on the couch with her cat, eating ice cream from the tub, watching The Notebook. (Really!) In other words, nothing to do with Wonder Woman.
• Work Wife - a show set in the world of real estate, featuring two Platonic Life-Partners who have taken the leap to start their own team. Now feeling the stress of being the boss, they have to rely on the yin-yang of their dynamic more than ever to keep their professional and personal lives afloat.
• Wurlitzer - A man inherits a decaying diner and its antique Wurlitzer jukebox. In each episode, the man selects a song on the jukebox and is then transported back in time to the year that song came out to help people with their problems.
• Young MacGyver: Failed pilot from 2003 starring Jared Padalecki as the nephew of the famous secret agent who follows in his uncle's footsteps. At a con in 2011, he described it as the worst acting he's ever done, going so far as to apologize to a fan who watched it.
• You're in the Picture: 1961 CBS game show hosted by Jackie Gleason where the celebrity panel put their heads in cut-outs of painting reproductions, and had to guess the scene depicted. It was slaughtered by critics so much that the following week's episode instead featured Gleason delivering a self-deprecating "apology", poking fun at the show and his past failures. Gleason's apology is considered one of the premier mea culpas of the television age; CBS would let Gleason ride out the rest of his contract by replacing it with an informal interview series (The Jackie Gleason Show), and followed it up in 1962 with the more successful American Scene Magazine.
• ¡Aquí mando yo!, the Spanish version of British show Gogglebox, premiered on Antena 3 on April 15, 2016 and was canceled by the channel on April 18 after the extremely poor ratings — and negative feedback — of the first episode. The official version about this is that the show has been "sent to the workshop", which is basically jargon for going back to Development Hell.

Two-Episode Wonders

• CBS debuts 3 in 2012; that series bombed in the ratings and was axed after two airings.
• Abby's Studio Rescue.
• The Adventures of Kotetsu.
• AFP, an air force documentary.
• Apple Pie, an eccentric 1978 sitcom starring Rue McClanahan and Dabney Coleman, created by Norman Lear. Seven episodes were produced, but ABC only aired two of them.
• The Assets, a 2014 period drama by ABC, based on the book Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed. It was actually an eight part miniseries, but only the first two parts aired in a prime timeslot, with the rest getting the summer Saturday night burn-off treatment in bulk.
• Ayane-chan High Kick! (aka Ayane's High Kick): A female Ordinary High-School Student with dreams of getting into Professional Wrestling is scouted by a former kickboxer who tricks her into getting into the sport because of her incredibly powerful kicks.
• Bare Brita Show, a live talk show starring Brita Møystad Engseth. The first episode suffered from disappointing ratings and critical reception. The creators were hoping that this would improve with time, but the second episode instead had a 32% drop in viewership. As a result, the show was cancelled.
• Big Shamus, Little Shamus, which drew few viewers to CBS from The Love Boat.
• Telltale Games' Bone. We can assume they were going to go through all 9 chapters of the series, but they only got to the second chapter, "The Great Cow Race", and then dropped it. Although it's still available to purchase from their site, and nothing has said they'll never come back to it...except the 2018 Telltale shutdown.
• Clerks: The Animated Series. Although six episodes were produced, only two were shown on the network that commissioned the show (episodes 4 and 2, in that order).
• Do No Harm, a modern-day Jekyll & Hyde tale centered around a brain surgeon. It saw the lowest ratings ever for a series premiere on one of the Big Four networks, and was killed the week after that. It was so bad, one station in Milwaukee was happy to pre-empt the second episode for alleged 'extended snowstorm coverage' when a sudden lake effect storm came in, even though the rest of the market found it to be an average snowfall.
• Doubt (2017): 13 episodes filmed, pulled from the schedule after just two were aired.
• Dragon Half had only two OVA episodes based on the manga. Legend has it the OVAs were cancelled after the mangaka was busted for drug possession.
• The softcore Hentai anime Elf no Waku Okusan (aka The Elven Bride), detailing the attempts of a human and his wife, an elf to consummate their marriage despite the titular bride's incredibly small...er, "receptor".
• Elf Princess Rane only lasted two episodes before the creators "ran out of budget". This is highlighted by a close-up of one of the characters begging the viewing audience for more money so they can continue the series.
• There was a two-episode Fire Emblem OAV based on the Archanea games^note Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem that detailed the beginning of Marth's quest, showcased the first few battles, and brought in more than a few of the first set of characters present in the game.
• girlsclub, a 2002 David E. Kelley-created show about a trio of young female lawyers (yes, the title was written that way), had six episodes produced but only two aired; a contest for the show which involved a set visit had to be changed around to give out cash instead.
• ABC dumped The Great American Dream, a modern equivalent of Queen for a Day hosted by Donny Osmond in which female contestants got to see their dreams come true. Five episodes were taped, but only two aired.
• Hardwicke House, a 1987 British sitcom about an anarchic school, was ill-advisedly scheduled in ITV primetime. A media campaign led to its cancellation after two episodes. It was not repeated, and the other 5 episodes were never shown although they are not wiped and remain visible in the ITV catalog (just very expensive to order). A DVD release was planned circa 2010, but was scuppered due to issues concerning the unbroadcast episodes (since they were never shown, they had to be assessed as a "new" programme, and ITV decided they still didn't wish to be associated with the show). The full series finally saw the light of day when it was uploaded to YouTube in 2019.
• The Henry and June Show, a spin-off of KaBlam!.
• Hank Azaria's attempt to get a career beyond The Simpsons, Imagine That, was cancelled after two episodes aired.
• The 2013 reality competition show The Job was canned by CBS after 2 episodes and many negative reviews, even though several more episodes had been filmed. Even the trailer seemed like they weren't sure whether to sell it as a serious reality show or So Bad, It's Good. In the end, it was just plain bad, and not bad enough to be So Bad, It's Good.
• Knock Knock Live, a FOX show in which Ryan Seacrest knocked on people's doors to surprise them by making their wishes come true, only ran for two episodes because of low ratings and negative reception.
• FOX drama Lone Star is a bit of an odd example because it was supposed to be the network's big show for 2010; however, it was canned after two episodes due to abysmal ratings. This was generally thought to be because it took the Anti-Hero fashion too far and had a Villain Protagonist who was genuinely devoid of any redeeming features.
• Lucky 7, an ABC drama about seven gas station employees winning the lottery, only to struggle with the repercussions of the windfall. With the lowest rated fall drama premiere in ABC history, it was swiftly axed, with some commentary on how it might not have been wise to stake a drama on "working class joes learn how to struggle with the burdens of hitting it big" during a time of economic downturn.
• Made in Jersey was cancelled after its second episode, though CBS was nice enough to air the rest of the already-shot episodes. On Saturday nights.
• Mighty Space Miners
• And yet another FOX example: the 2007 reality series Nashville, which featured up and coming country music stars, including Jamey Johnson, Chuck Wicks (later a Dancing with the Stars finalist), and Terry Bradshaw's daughter Rachel. Six taped, two aired. Not to be confused with the ABC drama Nashville, begun in 2012.
• A&E thought it was a good idea to pick up a show called Neighbors with Benefits, a reality series where swingers who have families in suburban Cincinnati attempt to foist their practices on the rest of the neighborhood. The rest of America was turned off almost immediately, and the network canceled it after two episodes, not even letting the cast know that it wasn't airing the third episode.
• The Paul Reiser Show aired on NBC in 2011 for two weeks, then was cancelled due to very poor ratings. NBC was not doing very well at the time, so the show had to have been doing pretty poorly to be cancelled so quickly.
  • The episodes that did air were the ones with the biggest-name celebrity guests meaning they had very in-industry storylines and didn't properly introduce the characters. Viewers only saw Reiser's character's wife once and never saw his kids, which wasn't the intention...
  • And even worse, one of the episodes aired featured Larry David, only pointing out clearly that this was an NBC attempt at a Curb Your Enthusiasm Expy.
• Princess Rouge.
• The Roaring Twenties.
• Scorch was a short-lived Fantastic Comedy starring ventriloquist Ronn Lucas as a dragon who awakens in modern times after a hundred-year nap. He ends up moving in with single dad Brian Stevens and his daughter Jessica, and ends up getting Brian a job as a weatherman by (amusingly enough) posing as a ventriloquist's dummy. Only six episodes were made, and only three of them aired.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie had only two episodes due to the franchise's lack of popularity in Japan.
• Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman, based on a 9-volume manga series.
• Viva Laughlin, an attempt at bringing the British musical murder mystery miniseries Blackpool to American shores. Despite being executive produced by Hugh Jackman (who had a recurring part!), it met with critical venom, lost viewers at a precipitous rate and was dead within a week.
• We Are Men, a single-camera Sitcom for CBS's 2013-14 season. Four episodes were shot, but only two aired before the show was cut off.
• Peter Berg's Wonderland is an unusual case in that in its first airing it actually won its time slot against a rerun of ER, which was still a ratings juggernaut. Misfortune quickly followed, though. Advocacy groups protested the first scene of the pilot, in which a mentally ill man goes on a shooting spree. The second episode was crushed when ER returned with new episodes. It might have survived as a prestige series in other times, but ABC was in a period of artificially high ratings expectations due to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
• ABC Disguised in Drag comedy Work It was cancelled after two episodes due to low ratings and protests from the LGBT+ community.
• Wulin Warriors, the 2006 English dub of the 25th season of the Taiwanese show Pili, had 13 episodes completed, but lasted only two episodes on Cartoon Network's Toonami before it was canceled due to hostile reception. Broadcasting a live-action puppet show on a network dedicated to animated shows will do that. The rest of the episodes were later featured on AOL's Kids Online channel, but none of them were broadcast on television again. It would not be until 2016's Thunderbolt Fantasy, a Taiwanese-Japanese collaboration between Pili's staff and nitro+, that Taiwan's unique form of puppetry would see both broadcast and success outside of Asia, being simulcast on the North American Crunchyroll website (which itself mostly streams anime). Three years later, the 2019 Netflix premiere of Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons marked the first entry in the Pili series to be broadcast uncut in English-speaking countries.

Hey, It Worked for M*A*S*H : Movie to TV Attempts

• Black Bart: A half-hour sitcom version of Blazing Saddles which can now be found as an extra on the movie's 40th Anniversary DVD and can be easily summarized as just like the movie, only without Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, or jokes.
• The Clerks live-action pilot from 1995 with Jim Breuer.
• Before the Fargo show we all know and love, a 1997 pilot tried to continue Marge Gunderson's adventures as a Minesota cop after the original film. The pilot ends with her giving birth to a baby girl.
• Diner: In 1983 Barry Levinson wrote and produced a half hour sitcom version of his movie of the same name, with Paul Reiser reviving his original role.
• Popeye Doyle: Aired as a Movie of the Week, this version of The French Connection cop hero was played by Ed O'Neill, broadcast about a year before he found himself Married... with Children.
• The Sunshine Boys: Neil Simon ... possibly encouraged by the success of the sitcom version of his play The Odd Couple (of which he had no part in the adaption process) ... created a pilot based on the movie/play in which Vauldvillian Partners Al Lewis and Willie Clark stir up trouble in the Actor's retirement home they are sent to.
• My Big Fat Greek Life, the television version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. As soon as Life was canned, TLC decided to borrow the elements from the original Wedding film and create a reality show named My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
• The Zombieland series, due to vast amounts of Tainted by the Preview.
• NBC attempted a shot at adapting Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) as a show, starring Martin Henderson and Jordana Brewster. It didn't get picked up.
• An entire season of a series based on the film Heathers was shot. Paramount Network abandoned the whole thing due to controversy around the subject matter before airing the first episode, although said episode made it onto iTunes and cable on-demand services. Ultimately a subversion, as Paramount did end up scheduling the series to air after all, albeit edited for content.
• The Omen: A 1995 Made-for-TV Movie based on the popular movie series, in which an epidemiologist teams up with a photojournalist and an E.R. nurse to try to stop a demonic entity which has the power to possess people.

Subversions

• In 1993, CBS aired Wanna Bet?, an adaptation of the German game show Wetten, dass?... as a one-time primetime special hosted by Mark McEwen and Gordon Elliott. 15 years later, ABC used the same title for another revival of the same, hosted by Ant and Dec for six episodes.
• In May 2004, PAX debuted a Game Show called On The Cover, which aired for two episodes before abruptly stopping. It came back later in the year with some (mostly cosmetic) changes and paired with a game show adaptation of Balderdash, but was gone again after its first "real" season.
• Subverted again with another game show, The Rich List. The series' only broadcast episode aired on Fox in 2006, and was canceled due to low ratings. A year later, the show's format was brought over to the UK as Who Dares Wins, which fared far better and lasted 11 years.
  • It didn't stop 12 Yard from trying again in the US, and so the show was Re Tooled in 2009 as The Money List, which aired on GSN...for nine episodes.
• G4's Proving Ground, an Experiment Show focusing on recreating things from video games, movies, and TV shows, was pulled off G4's schedule after co-host Ryan Dunn died in a car accident after only one episode had aired. The remaining eight episodes were eventually quietly run off later in the summer, and co-host Jessica Chobot had the rest of her deal changed into taking a correspondent role on X-Play.
• An interesting case involves The Miraculous Year, an HBO pilot written by John Logan and directed by Kathryn Bigelow (her first directing job after winning an Academy Award) and featuring an All-Star Cast including Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Lee Pace, Hope Davis, Linus Roache, and Eddie Redmayne about the dysfunctions of a family of people who work in and around Broadway. Despite the pedigree of the cast and crew, the project was dropped by HBO before the pilot even aired, allegedly because the network was worried it was an Audience-Alienating Premise.
• There have also been cases of shows cancelled after one or two episodes going on to longer runs elsewhere. An example being the aforementioned series The Will, which was cancelled almost immediately by its host network, but later played in full on a cable channel.
• The TV series Kodiak was officially cancelled after the first episode, but four were broadcast (probably because they had already been completed).
• In 2020, The CW began airing original epiodes of the British series Taskmaster. However, they gave up on running the show after just one episode had aired and reruns of Supernatural were put in its slot. Taskmaster had run for five years in the UK at this point.
• HoopDogz was initially this trope in its initial run, with two episodes being released from 2004-2005. Two more episodes were completed (bringing the series to four episodes total), but were not released until 2011.

In-universe One-Episode Wonders and Parodies

• American Dad! has White Rice, a sitcom about Francine's life as a white girl adopted by a Chinese couple. It gets cancelled after one joke, probably setting a record for both real and fake shows.
• In Anime-Gataris, the anime that Minoa dreamed about was revealed to be memories of watching the pilot of Ultra Katharsis Kortisi: Eternal Symphony. It aired on TV only once, but the episode's plot was considered so meandering and Reference Overdosed at the expense of story that the executives canned it. Its director considered it such an Old Shame (even he didn't know what he was referencing when he made it) that he swore off anime completely and actively tries to suppress the entire medium's popularity when he becomes a school's principal.
• In A Comedian Dies, one of Simon Brett's novels about actor/amateur detective Charles Paris, Charles investigates the electrocution of a young comedian, while getting a gig on the pilot for The New Barber and Pole Show, starring formerly-famous elderly comedian Lennie Barber and Charles as the Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Lennie's late straight man Wilkie Pole (although Lennie had all the talent in the partnership, when he went solo he bombed because he needed a straight man like Pole). The pilot becomes a shambles, not least when Lennie goes off-script and into funny but un-transmittable comedy (one network executive says he'd rather show a half-hour of rained-out cricket). Lennie lives up to the title of the book in both senses at the end.
• Cucumber Quest has Hyper the Speedsword, a cartoon featuring an Expy of Sonic the Hedgehog. It lasted two episodes, but it did teach Almond the most important thing about combat: "The only rule... is COOL!"
• The Dana Carvey Show had a fake newscast during the end credits of its premiere declaring that it had been canceled 15 minutes into its first episode. The real show got a couple more than that.
• Family Guy:
  • Brian pitches a drama to CBS called What I Learned on Jefferson Street, in which Elijah Wood would play a single father returning to college to give him and his young daughter a better life. CBS rewrites the script so extensively that it becomes Class Holes!, a sitcom starring James Woods attending college alongside his daughter. It airs only one episode due to very low ratings.
  • Peter pitches a show called Handiquacks and almost gets it on air — but when an executive proposes a very minor change to one of the characters, Peter immediately pulls the plug and quits, turning down thousands of dollars to preserve his pride — even after the executive relents and agrees not to change anything.
  • In "PTV", Peter creates the titular channel filled with uncensored content. One of them is a parody of Jackass called Douchebags. He poops on top of a bridge which lands on Lois's car. The FCC comes over to the Griffin’s house and cancels PTV and Douchebags after one episode.
• Friends gives us Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E., Joey's first shot as a TV lead, in which a cop gets a primitive robot as a partner and they fight crime. Apparently, the show is even worse than the premise lets on, as even Joey's friends have trouble mustering up any kind of encouragement after watching it, and it's cancelled as soon as it airs.
• Futurama has a brief scene at the 3010 ComicCon, where Matt Groening's head shows a teaser of his new animated sci-fi show Futurella. FOX cancels it after just three seconds, prompting Groening to admit that the process has been streamlined.
• On Glee, Rachel attempts to write a TV show called That's So Rachel. It lasted one episode, which her manager says managed to offend every major human rights organization. The show's failure prompts Rachel to return to Lima and to McKinley after having left it all behind to chase stardom.
• Homestar Runner:
  • The Strong Bad Email "Best Thing" describes Limozeen: But They're In Space!, an animated Band Toon about the Fake Band Limozeen (in space, for whatever reason), which Strong Bad claims is the greatest thing he's ever "seen, done, or eaten". It didn't even finish airing the pilot before it was canceled, and the characters themselves halt the action midway through to inform the viewers that they can watch their future adventures in syndication or on DVD.
  • The Strong Bad Email "Montage" includes a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue (in the form of a montage) that alludes to the phenomenon:
    Strong Bad went on to host some show on Animal Planet. It was canceled before the first commercial break.
• Newhart has Seein' Double, a show created by aspiring TV producer Michael, starring Stephanie as identical twin sisters and Dick as their father. It's basically The Patty Duke Show meets Three's Company, with a whole lot of Stylistic Suck in both the acting and the writing.
• SCTV had the SCTV head, Guy Caballero, realize that Bob and Doug McKenzie were his station's Breakout Character stars and upgrade their simple "Great White North" spot into an opulent variety show. Unfortunately, this new arrangement is completely out of the brothers' comfort zone, and the resulting show is so disastrously inept that Caballero orders the broadcast canceled and the broadcast stopped right in the middle of a sketch. The McKenzies are forced to dismantle the set by themselves.
• Seinfeld has Jerry, the in-universe sitcom Jerry and George spend much of the series trying to make. In real life, Seinfeld's "show about nothing" was a hit; in the show's universe, it lasted one episode. Part of the problem was that Jerry and George's only ally at NBC who supported the show ran away to join Greenpeace for all the wrong reasons. They try for the rest of the series to get it back on the air, and they very nearly succeed when they get thrown in jail.
• The Shark Jumping sub-series "Once a Pilot" is about these, covering shows that either only lasted one episode or whose pilots never even made it to air.
• Stargate SG-1 has Wormhole X-Treme, which was variously said to have only run one episode before being cancelled ("Citizen Joe") or three episodes ("200") and got a feature film because it performed well on DVD. And then after the movie stalled in production, the network uncancelled it and it ran for another ten seasons.

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