or every pop culture phenomenon like The X-Files, True Blood, or Game of Thrones, there are dozens of other TV series that elicit the same reaction in viewers: How the heck did this get made? Just because Baywatch has an audience, does that mean fans will watch a supernatural version called Baywatch Nights? Did Friends fans still act friendly to Joey — a spin-off about one character from the ensemble sitcom? The answer to both questions is a resounding “no.”
The following underwhelming TV shows all aired and disappeared without much fanfare from U.S. audiences. When they pop up on streaming services, will you roll the dice?
Cop Rock (1990)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Television.
A lot of people, including yours truly, have a knee-jerk aversion to musicals. That didn’t deter the makers of Cop Rock from blending a dramatic police procedural and musical numbers.
Shockingly, it turns out that although Americans love police procedurals, they don’t tune in when detectives bust out in song-and-dance numbers in the middle of solving crimes. When TV Guide Magazine ranked the “Worst TV Shows Ever” in 2002, Cop Rock made the top 10. In this case, justice was served.
Joey (2004-2006)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television.
Friends barely ended its long run before the spin-off sitcom Joey, starring Matt LeBlanc returning as Joey Tribbiani, premiered the same year on NBC.
The reason why Friends worked is the chemistry between the cast. On Joey, the lead character seems more like a loser instead of a charming moron without his castmates to bounce lines off. Friends fans wanted to see Joey with his old friends, not these unfamiliar new ones.
As a result, NBC unfriended Joey and canceled the struggling sitcom after two seasons. Although 18.1 million curious Friends fans tuned in for the pilot, ratings plummeted to a low of 4.1 million in season two. You can understand why NBC would try a Friends spin-off, but Joey needed more engaging friends to surround the lead character.
Saved by the Bell: The New Class (1993-2000)
Image Credit: NBC Studios.
Saved by the Bell: The New Class somehow ran for seven seasons while the original Saved by the Bell only had four. Two characters, Principal Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins) and Screech (Dustin Diamond), returned for The New Class.
The original Saved by the Bell didn’t reinvent television but still had some unintentionally hilarious moments that later went viral, like when Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) took too many caffeine pills to help her get accepted to Stanford.
The New Class, despite a seven-season run, didn’t have the campy charm of the original show or its cast. Even though it aired longer, The New Class flunked with audiences and critics, mostly due to frequent cast changes that prevented viewers from getting to know the new characters.
Supertrain (1979)
Image Credit: NBC Productions.
The pricy failure Supertrain — essentially The Love Boat on a train track — lost steam after only nine episodes. The show follows the lives of passengers and crew on board a high-speed, nuclear-powered U.S. train tricked out with a swimming pool, retail stores, a gym, and even a medical center and nightclub.
Supertrain is notorious as the most expensive U.S. TV series at the time. When the producers saw trouble ahead and tried to retool the sci-fi drama as more of a sitcom, public interest had already left the station. If the premise of Supertrain still sounds intriguing to you, however, check out the riveting TV series Snowpiercer instead, which just ended its four-season run.
My Mother the Car (1965-1966)
Image Credit: United Artists Television.
The premise of My Mother the Car is out there: a man’s deceased mother is reincarnated as a 1928 porter touring car and she communicates with her son via the car’s radio.
With fantasy series such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie connecting with audiences in the swinging ’60s, it’s almost understandable why some TV producer green-lit a story about a car that comes to life. How about not as someone’s dead mom, though?
My Mother the Car came in second only to The Jerry Springer Show on TV Guide‘s 2002 list of the 50 worst TV shows.
Baywatch Nights (1995-1997)
Image Credit: The Baywatch Company.
In the Baywatch spin-off Baywatch Nights, Sgt. Garner Ellerbee (Gregory Alan Williams) and Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) team up to form a detective agency with an office located above a bustling nightclub.
For season one, Baywatch Nights tried a mystery-drama approach. With ratings in decline, the producers switched it up in season two by introducing sci-fi and paranormal themes into the storylines à la The X-Files. The syndicated Baywatch Nights then said “goodnight” after 2 seasons and 44 episodes.
The viewers were, and still are, out there for The X-Files, but not so much for Baywatch Nights. Instead of trying to replicate the success of the very different pop culture phenom starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the makers of Baywatch Nights should have first asked themselves what it was about Baywatch that made it such a success. Hint: it had nothing to do with ghosts or sea monsters.
Mrs. Brown’s Boys (2011)
Image Credit: BBC Studios Comedy Productions.
The BBC sitcom Mrs. Brown’s Boys takes place in Ireland and became popular in the U.K. and Australia. Brendan O’Carroll performs in drag to play family matriarch Agnes Brown.
Sometimes British humor gets lost in translation on this side of the pond, especially when the intended laughs involve male actors dressing up in old-lady drag. Mrs. Brown’s Boys also breaks the fourth wall regularly by directly addressing the audience, which makes the antics even sillier.
Mrs. Brown’s Boys continued with various one-off specials and even a fourth season that premiered in 2023. The loosey-goosey production never caught on in America, which prefers the drag performers on RuPaul’s Drag Race to O’Carroll’s crass sassy senior.
The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008-2013)
Image Credit: Brendavision!.
Shailene Woodley stars as a 15-year-old girl who gets knocked up and must go to high school with the baby’s father on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The show ran for five seasons on ABC Family between 2008 and 2013.
A show with this kind of time-sensitive premise doesn’t work for more than four years because once the baby’s parents graduate high school, they no longer have to interact daily. Although the first few seasons of The Secret Life of the American Teenager did surprisingly well with its target demo of young females even though critics trashed it, the appeal was not sustainable. Ratings dropped each season and, like the word “fetch” in Mean Girls, the producers came to realize that The Secret Life of the American High School Graduate was never going to happen.
Melody Rules (1994-1995)
Image Credit: Ross Jennings Productions.
Melody Rules is an American-style New Zealand sitcom about an even-tempered travel agent named Melody Robbins (Belinda Todd) who struggles to handle her siblings while their mother is off on an archaeological dig. The show ran for two seasons and is considered one of the worst sitcoms in history.
Before Melody Rules, Todd was best known as the cohost of the late-night news program Nightline, not for her comedic chops. This plus the fact that the network TV3 paid an American writer to school the Melody Rules writers in the way of American sitcoms made the show awkwardly unfunny to audiences in both countries. The addition of an American-style sitcom laugh track didn’t help.
An excellent example of a New Zealand comedy series that accurately reflects the country’s quirky sense of humor is Wellington Paranormal, which generates genuine laughs and has no need for a laugh track.
What/If (2019)
Image Credit: Netflix.
The miniseries What/If starring Jane Levy and Renée Zellweger explores the ripple effects of what happens when otherwise acceptable members of society make poor moral choices. Although intended as a recurring series with each season featuring a different cast à la The White Lotus, Netflix never ordered a second helping after 2019’s season one.
Critics may have praised Zellweger for sinking her teeth into the role of a campy cougar seductress, but the overall consensus of What/If was “mediocre.”
Sunset Beach (1997-1999)
Image Credit: NBC Studios.
The daytime soap opera Sunset Beach about the romantic lives of an Orange County beach community tried to capitalize on the public’s appetite for SoCal-based soaps such as Melrose Place. Although Sunset Beach lasted for 3 seasons and 755 episodes, it never achieved the ratings numbers of its daytime contemporaries such as Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless.
After NBC canceled Sunset Beach in 1999, U.K. college students unexpectedly embraced the soap as a Channel 5 favorite. Much like the Melrose Place soirees of the 1990s in America — a few of which I hosted — some universities in the U.K. had Sunset Beach parties at which guests dressed up as their favorite characters.
Hull High (1990)
Image Credit: Touchstone Television.
Remember reading about the musical police procedural Cop Rock a little earlier? That musical misfire debuted one month after Hull High, a musical teen comedy set at the racially diverse Cordell Hull High School.
Although audiences later embraced Glee and High School Musical as well as tolerated the musical episodes of Riverdale, Hull High hit a sour note with audiences from the first day of school. NBC canceled the low-rated series after only six episodes, leaving three unaired. Somehow Glee sidestepped Hull High‘s mistakes and made teen musicals great again.
Hello, Larry (1979-1980)
Image Credit: T.A.T. Communications Company.
The sitcom Hello, Larry stars McLean Stevenson as Larry Alder, a divorced radio talk show host who moves to Portland, Oregon with his two teen daughters. The series ran for 2 seasons for a total of 38 lackluster episodes.
Hello, Larry had several crossover episodes with Diff’rent Strokes, a popular sitcom of the era. Despite airing back-to-back with Diff’rent Strokes, audiences didn’t stick around to say hello to Hello, Larry. In 2002, TV Guide ranked Hello, Larry number 12 on its list of the “50 Worst Shows of All Time.” The name Hello, Larry even became shorthand for things that have failed.
Goodnight Sweetheart (1993-2016)
Image Credit: Alomo Productions.
Goodnight Sweetheart is just your average British time-travel comedy — with an emphasis on the word “average” — about a man who leads a double life with families in 1940s London and 1990s London after discovering a time portal.
The series ran for six seasons between 1993 and 1999, returning with a one-off special in 2016. Although British audiences embraced the silly series and talk about a musical remake continues to this day, Goodnight Sweetheart is another one of those uniquely British series that American audiences just do not get no matter what time period it is set in.
L.A’s Finest (2019-2020)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television.
The short-lived Spectrum action-crime drama L.A.’s Finest is a spin-off of the Bad Boys movie franchise in which Gabrielle Union plays Detective Lieutenant Sydney “Syd” Burnett. Jessica Alba plays Detective Nancy McKenna, Syd’s new partner as well as secretly a former criminal. Shh!
Critics pointed out the series’ “outdated sensibilities” when it aired during the 2020 social justice protests. Suddenly, police procedurals came under scrutiny for their depiction of violence, which resulted in the cancellation of long-running shows such as Cops and Live PD. L.A.’s Finest got caught up in the abrupt culture shift, and Spectrum canceled it after two seasons.
