The 33 greatest TV shows that ran for only one season
Jun. 12, 2024These overlooked gems won’t take you too long to binge over a weekend
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When we think of iconic TV shows, we might think of long-lasting sagas that unravel over many seasons. But some of the best TV shows of all time only managed to eke out just one season at all, if that. So, what might be some of the greatest one-season TV shows ever made?
While many TV classics like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad spent many years on the air, some gems have only lasted just one single season. Many times, these gone-so-soon shows were greatness far ahead of its time, too original and too daring to be appreciated in the time it aired. Other times it was just bad marketing, with the right audience members unaware that their next favorite obsession is already canceled.
In the streaming era, some shows do not attract enough paying subscribers, never mind that our claustrophobic algorithms often trap us in what we’re already familiar with. Which is why there has been an uptick in limited miniseries, shows that are designed as one-and-done experiences (like a movie!).
Whether they were canceled due to low ratings or designed as a limited series from the start, these are 33 of the greatest TV shows that ran for only one season.
33. Clerks: The Animated Series
Only a few years after Kevin Smith’s 1994 directorial feature Clerks became an indie film sensation, it somehow made its way to network TV as Clerks: The Animated Series. Set in the same continuity as the movie, Dante and Randall (voiced by original actors Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson respectively) still work the counter of the Quik-Stop convenience store in New Jersey when billionaire Leonardo (Alec Baldwin) rolls into town, turning their lives upside down. Though it ran for only six episodes and came with softer edges than its movie counterpart, Clerks: The Animated Series was quickly embraced online as a subversive comedy that lampooned sitcom conventions and the pop culture zeitgeist. Its popularity foreshadowed the arrival of other adult animated hits like Family Guy.
Ask anyone who tuned into G4TV back in the day and they might remember Fastlane. In what is basically an episodic TV version of “Heat meets Fast & Furious,” Peter Facinelli and Bill Bellamy star as two mismatched cops working undercover in a secret division of the LAPD while Saved by the Bell’s Tiffani Thiessen co-stars as Billie, their commanding lieutenant. Though lauded for its action movie presentation and entertaining chemistry among its stars, Fastlane was simply too expensive - so many exotic sports cars! - for Fox to keep on the air. Fastlane found a brief second life on the gamer-centric G4TV channel, where it ran on repeat.
Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox
From science fiction filmmaker Alex Garland, Devs was an eerie thriller that explored the dark underbelly of bleeding edge technology. Sonoya Mizuno stars as a software engineer who takes a job at the ultra-secretive quantum computing company Amaya to figure out the circumstances of her boyfriend’s death at the same job. Parks & Recreation’s Nick Offerman co-stars as the antagonistic Amaya CEO, Forest. Premiering on Hulu just weeks before widespread quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Devs drew widespread praise from TV critics and was reportedly one of Hulu’s most-watched shows on its platform.
Amid the genre TV renaissance of the mid-2000s, led by shows like Lost and Heroes, a new show took a comparatively more spiritual approach to Quantum Leap. In Journeyman, Kevin McKidd plays a San Francisco journalist who discovers the power to travel backwards in time. He quickly learns that each “jump” brings him in touch with a person whose life he’s meant to change. Naturally, this newfound power affects his life and relationships - including with his deceased ex-fiancee (Moon Bloodgood), who in fact was a time traveler too. Though Journeyman couldn’t attract the same viewers as its contemporaries, it drew positive reviews based on McKidd’s magnetism as its male lead.
In this acclaimed HBO miniseries that accrued a whopping 16 Emmy nominations, Kate Winslet plays a haunted Pennsylvania detective who investigates the murder of a teen mom. Surrounding Winslet is a sterling ensemble cast that includes Evan Peters, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, David Denman, Guy Pearce, and more. Renowned as a showcase for Winslet (who laboriously studied the regional “Delco” accent) and its immersive, textured depiction of working class Philadelphia suburbs, Mare of Easttown might seem like a prestige TV cliche but is in fact so much more.
After The West Wing went out on a high note, its creator Aaron Sorkin strove to essentially do it all over again by replacing Washington D.C. for Hollywood. Set behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip followed the lives of its eccentric cast and crew whose personal and professional lives clash in hilarious ways. Friends' Matthew Perry plays the head writer whilst Bradley Whitford co-stars as the producer. Its large ensemble also included Amanda Peet, Sarah Paulson, D. Hughley, Nate Corddry, and more. While Studio 60 was outclassed by another similar show that premiered at the same time, the longer-lasting 30 Rock, Studio 60 has kept a devoted audience ever since it was canceled in 2007.
It was and is one of Netflix’s most popular original shows of all time. A few years after her breakout role in Robert Eggers' folk horror hit The Witch, Anya Taylor-Joy found an even bigger audience in the Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit. Taylor-Joy asserts her onscreen dominance in her lead role as Beth Harmon, a female chess prodigy and alcoholic in the late 1950s. Acclaimed for its top-notch filmmaking and Taylor-Joy’s leading performance, The Queen’s Gambit also inspired a modern day revitalization of chess as a hobby.
Despite early buzz as a must-watch new show on NBC, Micahel Green’s Kings never really took its destined seat on the throne. Loosely based on the story of King David, Kings takes place in an alternate historical timeline where its characters inhabit the fictional kingdom of Gilboa, a place that closely resembles 21st century United States. Ian McShane stars as Silas Benjamin, King of Gilboa, an analog to King Saul. Christopher Egan co-stars as the David analog, a character named David Shepherd, an idealistic soldier caught in the show’s court intrigue. Though TV critics didn’t hail Kings and it suffered middling ratings due to mishandled marketing, Kings has sustained some level of cult popularity since it went off the air in July 2009.
Before transforming The Last of Us from a video game to acclaimed HBO drama, screenwriter Craig Mazin proved he was more than “the Scary Movie guy” with his searing period miniseries Chernobyl. A five-part epic, Chernobyl dramatizes the April 1986 nuclear plant disaster in Soviet Union Ukraine, and the literal fallout from what happened. With the opening line, “What is the cost of lies?” Chernobyl reveals the expected and unexpected hazards of mankind’s precarious ability to contain the elements.
Has there ever been a one-season show that left as big a legacy as Freaks and Geeks? Created by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow, Freaks and Geeks - and its ensemble cast of future Hollywood mega-stars - aired for just one measly season on NBC, during the 1999-2000 season. Set in the early 1980s, Freaks and Geeks follows the misadventures of teenagers in suburban Detroit. With a cast that included Linda Carellini, James Franco, John Francis Daley, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Martin Starr, and Busy Philipps, Freaks and Geeks might have died a swift death, but it’s hard to ever forget.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
Henry Cavill breaks silence on Warhammer TV show and teases the amount of work that’s already been put into the project
Where to find the discarded key in Indiana Jones
