Column Chronicles: TV shows that were cancelled during their first episodes

TV shows that were cancelled during their first episodes

Frank Cotolo
May 25, 2017

TV network executives don't always get it right when they commission a series from a promising pilot episode. Not many people are aware that there were at least 10 programs that networks praised after viewing the pilot episodes, gave the go-ahead to produce a season's worth of shows and then cancelled during the first episode's airing.

Bedtime For Daddy
NBC loved the pilot, featuring Tom Arnold as a single father of three who hasn't slept an entire night in 34 years. In the first aired episode, NBC cancelled the show 12 minutes into it when one of the three kid characters said the line, "Let's put daddy to sleep once and for all," and displayed an electric saw as the other two kids laughed.

Robots In Love
ABC was enthusiastic about the pilot of this science fiction drama about female-like androids that help men learn to romance women. On the first night the show aired, ABC executives were appalled five minutes into the story when one of the androids in the story was seen wearing a Nazi armband.

Send Me No Flowers
FOX gave this show the go-ahead after seeing a promising pilot. However, during its prime time debut, the lead character, a lonely middle-aged woman played by pop star Madonna, dropped six F-bombs in a row while introducing her self to a male character in the first eight minutes of the story.

The Wild Countryside
CBS went nuts for this western drama with a pilot starring Munro Chambers as a sheriff in a small, conservative Wyoming town in the 1950s. However, episode one was cut short five minutes before the climax when freshman actor Brent Siack's character began breakdancing in front of the town saloon.

I'm Centaur, He's Brutus
What ABC thought it was buying was an hilarious comedy with the fresh comedy team of Brent Centaur and Lyle Brutus as two run-of-the-mill heart surgeons faking their way through operation after operation. However, when the show's first episode was broadcast, it began with Brent and Lyle very seriously performing an operation, sweating profusely, for six minutes. Then, in the seventh minute, Brent kneeled down out of frame as Lyle continued to operate, only Lyle began to moan in pleasure, suggesting that Brent was no his knees performing oral sex on his partner. As Lyle's moans became louder, ABC pulled the plug on the episode and went to a baseball game already in progress.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.