In today’s installment of ‘If I was head of a network’ I will take the seat of a cable network executive and choose four shows from the past decade that I would have made a bid for once they got the axe on broadcast.

With the exception of ‘Alias’ none of these shows ran for over three seasons and if you ask me a good chunk of the blame can be placed on the network.

So lets say I am the head of ‘The TF’ a channel that comes with your basic cable. (To spice it up we also have a deal with Hulu). These are my picks (arranged from, ‘I would jump in front of a train to get this show on my network’ to ‘I would like to have had a few more seasons but if not, it ended well as is’).

1) It would be hard to have a list of great shows canceled to soon and not have ‘Arrested Development’ on it. If you have never seen ‘Arrested’ stop reading this garbage, run to your local video store and rent all three seasons. It may take a three or four episodes to warm to however after that you’ll be hooked on what was, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the funniest show to ever hit airwaves. I don’t want to judge but from what I can tell, the network messed this show up, throwing it in all sorts of crazy time slots, even airing an episode during an opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics! Creator Mitchell Hurwitz said he felt he had taken the show just about as far as he felt he could, however I still would have made a lucrative bid to bring ‘Arrested Development’ to my cable network.

2) I guess the only way to describe what happened here was that ‘television was just not ready for Pushing Daisies’ seriously. This show from Brian Fuller (who left ‘Heroes’ for it), is amazing, it’s dark but upbeat, morbid but happy, and very, very colorful. A man who can touch dead people, bring them back to life just long enough to find out who killed them and collect the reward. When I think of this show one word springs to mind, ‘delightful’, it actually makes me happy watching it it’s TV’s anti-depressant.

3) From Joss Whedon creator of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ came ‘Firefly’, canceled after just 14 episodes. The premise was simple; a western in space. A bunch of soft hearted smugglers always just one step ahead of the Alliance, hoping from one quirky terraformed planet to the next always delivering cargo on time and undamaged. Think ‘Han Solo heads to the Ok Corral’. An elaborate pilot was written for the series which took time to carefully introduce each member of the large ensemble, but the network felt that it did not offer enough action and demanded Whedon write a faster paced first episode, that’s where things began to go array. Hungry for more action the network took the episodes they had shot, which in order told a coherent story, and aired the ones with the most action first. (Imagine watching ‘Lost’ or ‘Heroes’ in order of which episodes had the most action).

4) Of the four shows on this list, Alias is the least deserving. It got a great run of 5 terrific seasons fully supported by the network. I stuck it here because I love it so much and would have loved another season or two (a network exc. thinking with the heart not the head). Season 5 felt a bit rushed although they were a bit limited with Jennifer Gardner’s pregnancy and several other people leaving. I feel if we had gotten a sixth season it would have allowed a bit more exploration of Prophet 5.

There you have it, feel free to comment, argue, sympathize, weep, express your rage, (Browncoats go to town).

Finally, I was thinking about including Rob Thomas’s ‘Veronica Mars’ however I just started watching so I can’t really say for sure. I’ll give it an honorable mention.

Images: wikipedia.org

written by Travis \\ tags: Alias, Arrested Development, Firefly, If I was head of a network, Pushing Daisies, TF, Travis Fantina, Veronica Mars