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- Jericho/CBS
TV Shows We Loved That Never Got The Attention They Deserved
Vote up the shows that deserved a lot more love than they ever got.
We get hit with the phrase Peak TV a lot now, but the fact of the matter is that we've always been buried under TV content and because of it a lot of great shows slip through the cracks. Well, we're doing our part to see that come to an end. These shows all deserved more love when they were on the air and we owe it to them now to track them down on DVD or various streamers and give them a shot. If you're hungry for a new show you could do far far worse than one of these.
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Despite having a ravenous fandom that managed to save the show after the first season was canceled on a massive cliffhanger (shouts to the Nuts people for rallying for more) and a second season that was all killer and no filler, Jericho just couldn't find it's footing at all. A part of me wants to say the show was ahead of its time with the mysteries it was feeding us and the themes it was playing with, but shows like Lost were already on the air and a huge hit. So maybe it was the network? Jericho aired on CBS, which to this day is known for having an older audience and a schedule of procedural programming. A part of me will always have to blame something like the network on Jericho's truncated lifespan because everything else about the show slapped.
The show reveled in juggling its small-town dynamics and politics with the many toys in its puzzle box format. The concept of a midwestern town banding together to survive what comes after most of the major cities in the US have been nuked gave the series miles of road to work with, and there are still plenty of unanswered questions. What was the deal with Jennings and Rall? How was the growing Civil War between the remnants of the constitutional US government and the Cheyenne-based Allied States of America going to shake out? The blueprint for more Jericho already exists, I just need one of the forty streaming platforms (looking at you Peacock) to step up and make my dreams come true.
-Jacob Bryant
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Right off the space-bat, let's get one thing straight: nobody's saying Star Trek: The Next Generation is overrated. It isn't. TNG is a brilliant show that is (correctly) beloved and enduringly popular. It is, however, a bit of a bummer that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will always live in TNG's Picard-shaped shadow.
That was probably always going to be the case, since DS9 was positioned as a quasi-spinoff from the jump, with the Enterprise D stopping by in the pilot and Worf becoming a major player starting in the fourth season. It didn't help that DS9 broke from a few staples of Star Trek up until that point, eschewing the earnest utopianism of the previous series and taking place on a space station rather than a starship. At the time, some Trekkies joked that the show's tagline should've been “to boldly sit where no one has sat before.”
All that works in the show's favor, though. Rather than focusing on frictionless human cooperation, Deep Space Nine gets at meaty drama by being about characters with competing loyalties and priorities, characters who have no interest in being around each other but have to work together anyway. Rather than exploration, the focus is on politics, imperialism, commerce, war, and multiculturalism in all its messy splendor. It was also forward-thinking in plenty of other ways. It broke from the more story-of-the-week format of the original series and TNG, pushing truly serialized multi-season arcs long before the era of Peak TV. And it was diverse as heck, not just in its casting, but in its themes; the show is, in many ways, about the difficulty and grace of diversity.
Crucially, it also has the coolest space bar in all of Star Trek. You can't watch DS9 without wanting to pull up a stool next to Morn in Quark's, the finest gin joint this side of Bajor.
-Tucker DeSaulnier
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Millennium
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Chris Carter’s legacy is creating one of the best sci-fi/horror/mystery shows of all time, but it should really be that he created two of the best sci-fi/horror/mystery shows of all time. Millennium may not have left the same cultural imprint as The X-Files, but for a little while there, it was its equal. For two years, to be exact. Its somewhat retooled third season was a step-down, and then it became another victim of low ratings.
A show about an FBI profiler who has the ability to see from inside the mind of killers - in particular serial killers, sort of like an extreme version of Will Graham - while navigating the uncertainties of a working within the nebulous framework of a shady institutional apparatus seems like it would have been catnip for ‘90s audiences, but it was their loss. Naturally, it shared a lot of DNA with The X-Files - the moody atmospherics, the anguished conflict between reason and belief - but it very much had its own identity, and a towering lead performance by a long-time character actor, Lance Henriksen, who deserved a starring role of that stature.
-Chris Bellamy
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Based on the 1995 film of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis, Syfy's 12 Monkeys took the story of a man traveling back in time to stop the release of a world-ending virus and morphed it into so much more. The series started as a fairly by-the-numbers science fiction story but over the course of its four-season run, it became one of the best time travel stories that television has to offer. The show was so much more than clever time travel and battles for the very existence for humanity though. That's what'll get you through the door, but what'll have you binging the series is the characters' struggling with the concepts of life and death, finding a family you fit in with, and living with the good and bad things you've done.
If that wasn't enough, the character's dynamics and relationships are constantly changing along with their allegiances. What's refreshing about this show is that it takes the time to present both sides of every case until you realize that everyone involved in the show is somehow simultaneously right and wrong about what they are currently doing. It makes for a fascinating watch when one minute you're loving a character and what they're doing and the next they're driving a knife into your heart.
It's far from the first time I've banged the drum for this show, but I truly believe it is one of the great TV gems that got lost in the era of Peak TV. Do yourself a favor and get to binging and then join my growing army of people that will also end up recommending it to everyone they meet.
-Jacob Bryant
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Freaks and Geeks ran for one under-watched, under-loved season, yet is now rightly regarded as a classic. Showrunner Judd Apatow went on to become the kings of cinematic comedy in the ‘00s and ’10s, while the cast of his sweet, awkward, beautiful little show became movie stars or popular ringers. But what about Apatow's other under-watched, under-loved one-season wonder that is also sweet, awkward, and occasionally beautiful?
Undeclared premiered in September 2001, a historical moment when America was busily staring into the abyss of the 21st century, and despite solid reviews, the show never really found an audience. Bouncing all over the Fox schedule for that one season, it became an odd footnote between Freaks and Geeks and Apatow's theatrical lightning-in-a-bottle moment with The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And that's a damn shame because Undeclared always deserved better. The show followed an insecure freshman to his first dorm on the campus of a fictitious Northern California college, and it captured the insecure college freshman in all of us. While Freaks and Geeks brought plenty of drama, Undeclared was a more straightforward comedy, with half-hour episodes chronicling prank wars, crushes, hook-ups, hazing, first credit cards, and even existentialism.
The unnervingly young, chipmunk-cheeked cast is led by Jay Baruchel, with future big deals Seth Rogen and Charlie Hunnam as his roommates. And the guest stars are a murderer's row: Jason Segel as an alternately pathetic and horrifying long-distance boyfriend, Amy Poehler as a libidinous RA, Will Ferrell as a speed-addicted townie, Kevin Hart as a devoted Christian, and Adam Sandler as Adam Sandler.
-Tucker DeSaulnier
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In March 2009, Lost was nearing the end of its penultimate season, and TV networks were scrambling to lay claim to the next big, high concept, slightly fantasy, slightly sci-fi, head-scratching ensemble drama. There were a lot of these things: Heroes, Jericho, Fringe, Revolution, Terra Nova, The Event, Invasion, FlashForward, Happy Town, Alcatraz... It's no surprise that Kings flew completely under the radar.
Frankly, I'm still impressed that this show even made it to air. Can you imagine sitting down for a pitch meeting with writer Michael Green and him saying, "I want to adapt first and second Samuel from the Bible, but in a present-day setting in an alternate universe, while focusing on the political squabbles of King Saul's family. You know, dealing with things like secret mistresses, war crimes, and homosexuality. What do you think?" I have so little faith in the entertainment powers-that-be that I believe the show was greenlit on the sole basis that NBC wanted a Lost - and they didn't care how bonkers it was. Bear in mind, this is many years before Green would write the screenplays for Logan, Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, or Murder on the Orient Express. But I digress.
I realize I'm supposed to be selling you on how good this show is, not pontificating about how wild it is that a network made a show about the Biblical King David set in modern times and starring Ian McShane. But honestly? That's part of what makes it so great. Kings freaking went there, and it went there hard. It's basically Succession meets The West Wing meets The 10 Commandments. And it stars Ian McShane! As well as Brian Cox, Sebastian Stan, and Macaulay Culkin, among others.
Kings had a style and a voice that was truly unique, and while the Judeo-Christian influence may have scared off viewers, the way it manifested in the show was extremely subtle. There is a darkness in Kings, and a mystery, that becomes ever more compelling as the series progressed. Maybe it was always destined to be a one-season-wonder, but at least it got to wrap up that one season in a semi-satisfying way.
Check this one out. It's weird and, for a show based on the Bible, surprisingly transgressive.
-Pierce Nahigyan
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M. Night Shyamalan’s name may not carry quite the cultural cachet it once did, but you’d still think a twisty supernatural slow-burn with his name at the top of the marquee would garner more interest than it’s gotten so far. The fact that Apple+ hasn’t yet achieved mainstream “original programming” legitimacy the way other streamers have probably doesn’t help. Then again, maybe the lack of zeitgeist scrutiny has done the series good, its relative anonymity allowing it to be its own peculiar self.
How peculiar? Suffice it to say that “dead baby gets replaced by a therapeutic doll, which then comes to life soon after the arrival of a mysterious young nanny” is the show at its most normal and straightforward. From there, its sense of psychological equilibrium gets more and more slippery - but it’s Shyamalan, as Servant’s showrunner (and frequent episode director, along with his daughter Ishana Shyamalan), who wields the show’s tricky tonal balance so masterfully. This is Shyamalan at both his darkest and his most playful; I cannot emphasize enough that this is one of the funniest shows on television and that Rupert Grint - Rupert Grint! - gives one of the funniest performances on television, as the sardonic, mildly pretentious, drug-addict brother-in-law.
Even as answers slowly get revealed, the show refuses to address its central mystery in simple terms. There’s nothing else like this on TV - nothing else with this specific tone, this specific sense of humor, this elite level of craftsmanship. It’s one of the best things Shyamalan has ever done.
-Chris Bellamy
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You hear the general setup of Patriot and you think you know more or less what it’s going to be. Top-secret intelligence officer, undercover, doing shady sh*t for the greater good? Okay okay, another one of those “morally ambiguous antihero” type dramas, got it. His high-ranking government father is his boss? Right, so it’s one of those “antihero with daddy issues” things. An over-determined police officer on his trail? Yep, sounds familiar.
Except it’s not the show you have in your head. Those are shows that - and FYI this is not a criticism, just a sort of broad description - revel in a certain image of the alpha male. They’re gritty and grimy and dark; Patriot is in many ways the opposite of all that, despite involving counter-terrorism, kidnapping, suicide, murder, addiction, and a main character who takes more physical damage over the course of two seasons than possibly any (mortal) character I’ve ever seen. The character, John Lakeman (not his real name), is an extremely skilled special agent whose exploits are not depicted in “wow this guy is a badass” terms, but rather with a darkly comic sense of obligatory resignation, if that makes sense.
This is a strangely sensitive show that revels in the structural absurdism of screwball comedy, with its wild turns of coincidence and chance and folly. It’s an espionage show that at times feels like slapstick, a character study about a guy resting on the knife’s edge between going all-in or giving up completely - between doing whatever it takes for the sake of country or succumbing to suicidal despair. It would be a fool’s errand to try to describe the show’s absurdist/existential/sardonic/satirical/sweet/melancholy tone, as you can tell by the fact that I’m just mashing adjectives together. But suffice it to say that it’s a beautiful and hilarious show that took what is ostensibly a prestige TV template and gave it a voice entirely its own. There’s nothing else quite like Patriot.
Creator/writer/director Steve Conrad - who also wrote the wildly underrated tragicomedy The Weather Man, with which Patriot shares a great deal of aesthetic DNA - is in full command here, and between this and Perpetual Grace, LTD and Ultra City Smiths, has established himself as one of the most tangibly unique voices in television, though seemingly one perpetually relegated to a niche audience.
-Chris Bellamy
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Completely lost in the Sopranos / Sex and the City hype of early-2000s HBO was a truly perfect one-of-a-kind comedy that far too many TV fans haven’t even heard of: The Comeback.
Lisa Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, a former huge sitcom star (wink!) who’s making a comeback on a new network sitcom, and her journey is being documented by a reality TV crew. She turns out to be too old for the role and gets pigeonholed as a wacky side character, and as everything unravels, the show becomes a pitch-perfect satire of Hollywood, TV sitcoms, and the 2000s reality TV explosion.
Then, after only running for one season in 2005, The Comeback returned for a second season in 2014 where Valerie ends up starring in a serious HBO drama about her experiences from the original series. It’s a completely different take that tonally nails the self-serious cable prestige TV boom of the 2010s, even co-starring Seth Rogen as the troubled writer desperately trying to turn his life story into *serious art.* In two brief, super-watchable, hilarious seasons, the series perfectly parodies three genres, while also serving as a human drama about aging and vanity and removing any doubt that Lisa Kudrow is one of the most underappreciated comic actresses of all time.
-Dan Hopper
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Wayne
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The title character of the 2019 YouTube Premium show Wayne, Wayne McCullough Jr., has fantasies of (literally) eviscerating bullish dads at bowling alleys. He bites off a man's nose. He burns down his own house with his dead father's body inside. And he's probably the sweetest, most romantic character I've seen on TV since I don't know when. The show Wayne manages to seamlessly blend moments of extreme violence and dark humor with real heart and sensitivity. Something about that combination just makes it feel real (and endlessly re-watchable) even though its storyline and individual vignettes are anything but realistic. The show juxtaposes the absurdity of the real violence and poverty experienced by its working-class characters against the absurdity of the over-the-top acts of violent vengeance that Wayne exacts, leaving the viewer feeling like all the actions are equally realistic in the world that it's created. Plus the acting is fantastic. Wayne is the hero we all need - but don't deserve - and this show deserves a second season.
-Ryleigh Nucilli
Deserved more love? - 11
Rubicon
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AMC’s entry into the original programming landscape was pretty much unparalleled. Its first two shows were Mad Men and Breaking Bad. And let’s not forget that it took a few years - and a burst of Netflix binge-watches between seasons - before the latter was the cultural phenomenon we know it was today. So it’s weird that network execs didn’t learn the lesson of Breaking Bad’s slow-moving ratings climb and give Rubicon more than one season to build its audience. Because I’m convinced its audience would have grown. And grown.
A conspiracy series that would have made Alan Pakula proud, Rubicon lasted just one season, but as single-season series go, it’s one of the best, even if its abbreviated status prevented it from unraveling the kind of big-picture mystery it was promising from the opening episode. It was a great showcase for James Badge Dale - aka That Awesome Dude Who Shows Up In Everything - and something of a precursor to more recent shows like Mr. Robot, which owes a similar debt to 1970s political thrillers.
That it not only didn’t get enough of a chance but was also unavailable on streaming, on-demand, or physical media for years afterward only added to the sense that the show was a weird anomaly that just came along at the wrong time.
-Chris Bellamy
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If you’ve ever seen the HBO animated series adaptation of the comic book Spawn, you know that each episode is bookended with a pretentious live-action introduction by writer/artist Todd McFarlane. He pontificates on big themes like life and death, fate, and vengeance before showing you the worst show you’ve ever seen in your life.
The British comedy series Garth Mahrengi’s Darkplace follows a similar structure with its "show within a show” device. Extremely vain horror writer “Garth Mahrengi” (played by series writer/creator Matthew Holness) introduces each episode of his TV series set at a haunted hospital. Over 6 half-hour episodes, we see the stupidest plots play out amongst cheap sets, laughably bad effects, and boneheaded drama. It’s the funniest show I’ve ever seen.
Co-starring a pre-What We Do In The Shadows Matt Berry, The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayode, and a scene-stealing Alice Lowe, each episode is stupider than the last and should be considered essential viewing for fans of horror, hospital shows, and ego-maniacal authors.
-Mark Rennie
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- That '80s Show/Fox
It was like so totally rad when That 80s Show debuted on Fox in January 2002! But by May of the same year, many who came of age in that most awesome decade were crying “gag me with a spoon!” upon learning the bogus truth that the series was canceled.
That 80s Show didn’t deserve its short shrift, despite naysaying reviewers like Eric Kohanik that “…about 20 years need to go by before you can poke fun at a period of history and turn it into a hit show.” Maybe it was a tiny bit premature - but not by much! And who’s to say when viewers will or won’t wax nostalgic?
Centered around the lives of friends and family in San Diego, CA, circa 1984, its cast offered fun stereotypes for everyone, including an environmentalist Valley Girl and Madonna wannabe; a punk rocker whose Liberty spikes qualified as deadly weapons; a clean-cut wannabe yuppie who thinks he can dance and idolizes Ronald Reagan; and a rock band groupie and ex-hippie who owns a record store.
Settings included places teens and young adults loved to frequent, such as record stores and dance clubs. And speaking of music, the show even had guest stars like John Taylor (of Duran Duran), Pat Benatar, her guitarist hubby Neil Giraldo, and Debbie Gibson.
-Shari Witaschek
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- Sons & Daughters/NBC
Saying that a show “never got the attention it deserved” sort of implies that the show got at least some attention. In the case of Sons & Daughters, a largely improvised ABC sitcom that ran for one season in 2006, seemingly zero attention was received. Though ABC did promote the show, it wallowed in a Tuesday night block opposite the most-viewed season in American Idol history (it was the Taylor Hicks season, for what it’s worth).
The premise is simple: A colorful extended family with an overstretched and unwitting patriarch, Cameron (played by co-creator Fred Goss), struggles to maintain a functional coexistence as the secret of divorce swirls amongst them. Nothing revolutionary. Sons & Daughters operates on the notion that a funny cast can create funny content– in my opinion, it totally delivers. And if it sounds like a familiar premise, well of course it is. As described in Variety, “the general tone is one of drollness, which only goes so far in a network setting, as Fox can attest from Arrested Development.” While this is written like a condemnation, to me it sounds like an endorsement. While not nearly as wacky, Sons & Daughters has shades of Arrested Development and even Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it also has a legitimate sweetness that neither of those contemporaries flirted with. In that sense, S&D laid the groundwork for ABC’s future mega-hit Modern Family.
A doomed timeslot. A style a bit ahead of its time. Sons & Daughters never stood a chance, but it had all the pieces to be something special. You can check out the first episode on YouTube.
-T.J. Peters
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