“Party Down”
In the Netflix era, you imagine that a comedy created by Paul Rudd and starring Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan and Jane Lynch, among others, (and with guest spots by J.K. Simmons, Kevin Hart and Kristen Bell) would be a very big deal indeed. But “Party Down” hit in 2009, just as a lot of those people were on the way up, and aired on Starz, a network that’s rarely done comedy before or since, and so remained a cult prospect at best for its two-season run before cancellation, though the cult’s undeniably grown over time. Planned six years before it reached the screen (“Veronica Mars” mastermind Rob Thomas was among the co-creators) and originally made as an unmade spec pilot that featured Rudd in the cast before Starz jumped on board, it follows a group of actors, writers and other would-be showbiz types who work at a catering company together, with each episode following them at a different event, from a mixer for conservative college students, to a draft day party and a wedding of one of their own. It’s an ingenious conceit, a workplace comedy with a host of different workplaces, but beyond that it was also excellent because it became one of the best shows about failure (and what happens when failure turns into success) ever made, the almost exact opposite of “Entourage.” We’ve been swamped with in-jokey entertainment-industry comedies since, but one of the reasons that they feel so played out is that few have managed to build an ensemble of lovable assholes with the wit and pathos (and even a sweet love story, in the one between Caplan and Scott’s characters here) that “Party Down” did. Talk of a revival movie never came to pass, but maybe it’ll get a “Wet Hot American Summer”-style follow-up one day.
“Rubicon”
When they moved into original programming, AMC had a remarkably high success rate at first, with immediate critical sensation “Mad Men” followed immediately by the potentially even more beloved “Breaking Bad,” with both shows becoming Emmy darlings and firmly putting the network on the map. But their third original (would-be) ongoing series failed to recapture the magic, being cancelled after a single run due to its disappointing ratings. Which was a damn shame, because “Rubicon” was pretty terrific. Created by Jason Horwitch (who penned an FX movie “The Pentagon Papers” with James Spader), it was a tribute to ’70s conspiracy thrillers like “The Parallax View” and “Three Days Of The Condor,” with James Badge Dale playing a grieving analyst at a private intelligence firm who uncovers a shadowy conspiracy that may be tied to the suicide of a businessman (Harris Yulin), whose wife (Miranda Richardson) begins conducting her own investigation. For those used to the splashier spy action of an “Alias” or a “24,” the show probably came as a shock: it was a surprisingly realistic take on intelligence analysis whose paranoia was more psychological than most in the genre. But its grown-up, nuanced, smart take on the genre felt positively refreshing, and a mostly under-the-radar cast (led by a star-making turn by Dale, who became sort of omnipresent afterwards) did excellent work throughout. But whether because its pacing was slower than spy fans were used to, because its cast wasn’t that recognizable, or because it never really had an immediate grabby hook in the way that, say, “Homeland” would a year later, it failed to bring in the viewers, and AMC (perhaps preparing for the oncoming behemoth that was “The Walking Dead,” which debuted just after “Rubicon” ended) weren’t prepared to give it the same patience as their earlier shows.
“Terriers”
Like fellow one-season wonders “Freaks & Geeks,” “My So-Called Life” and “Firefly” before it (though it’s a very different show to all of the above), “Terriers” has, in the six and a half years since it aired, taken on almost a hallowed reputation among TV critics: it’s beloved, in part, because it was cancelled so swiftly and was so little watched, and when fellow fans of the show find each other, it’s like a secret handshake or something. But then, when you watch it, you realize that it really is as good as all that. Created by “Ocean’s Eleven” screenwriter Ted Griffin (with “The Shield” mastermind Shawn Ryan producing), it was a sort of love letter to great detective fiction, with recovering alcoholic ex-cop Hank (Donal Logue) and his former housebreaker pal Britt (Michael Raymond-James) embroiling a sprawling “Chinatown”-like case after one of Hanks’ old pals is murdered. The plotting was terrific, with fun cases-of-the-week when they came while gradually building up the macro-story, but as all fans of the PI movie know, most of the meat comes from the character work, and the show’s Altman/‘Long Goodbye”-ish tone, and the lovely performances by Logue and Raymond-James, are part of the delight of the series. They were flawed, funny, and eminently lovable, even when they make catastrophic mistakes. Sadly, ratings were poor from the start, FX mis-marketing and maybe even mis-titling the show, and it never got a second run, though the network’s boss John Landgraf (who acknowledges now that a few years later, he might have renewed the show) still gets questions about it…
“Togetherness”
Trying to convince someone to watch HBO’s “Togetherness” wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. The series, which aired in two brief seasons in 2015 and 2016, didn’t feature dragons or lowlife criminals or young millennials trying to sort out their future. Instead, the dramatic tension revolved the almost mundane concerns of middle-age life: what happens when temptation threatens marriage, the pain of still waiting for that lucky break, and trying not give up on your dreams. In the hands of creators Jay and Mark Duplass (who also starred in the show), along with Steve Zissis (who also starred, and developed the series), the result was magic. Warm, deeply heartfelt, hilarious, and quietly moving, the richness of character in “Togetherness” aided a show that was almost continually about the triumph of the smaller moments in life. The cast was a knockout across the board, but Melanie Lynskey (as she almost always is) was a standout, while Amanda Peet shined in what might’ve been her best role in years. Surviving to deliver sixteen, half-hour episodes before it was canceled, they’re all worth treasuring, and even re-watching, as the world of “Togetherness” is one that’s tough to leave, and that you’ll want to revisit again.
‘Trophy Wife”
Given that they currently air “Modern Family,” “The Middle,” “Last Man Standing,” “The Goldbergs,” “Black-ish,” “Fresh Off The Boat,” “Dr. Ken,” “The Real O’Neals,” “Speechless” and “American Housewife,” who could possibly mourn the one family sitcom that ABC *didn’t* recommission? Well, we would, actually: “Trophy Wife” was, in its brief life, as good as or better than most of those shows, and if the network hadn’t mishandled it could have gone on to run just as long as them. It saw reforming party girl Kate (Malin Akerman) marry an older lawyer (Bradley Whitford), whose ex-wives, type A doctor Diane (Marcia Gay Harden) and hippy-ish Jackie (Michaela Watkins) remain part of his life in a big way. The cast — which also included Bailee Madison, “Super 8” star Ryan Lee and scene-stealer Albert Tsai as the kids, as the always welcome Natalie Morales as Akerman’s best friend — fell quickly into a relaxed, easy chemistry, and the show managed to be consistently funny (indeed, getting ever more so after a slightly uneven pilot) while it stumbled upon some fresh-feeling truths about the post-nuclear family. It wasn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, and maybe felt a bit milquetoast next to a “Black-ish” or “Fresh Off The Boat,” which were in development as it was cancelled, but it was an always winning watch that could have gotten better and better with time. Alas, rather than giving it the prime post-“Modern Family” slot that could have made it a hit (which the network gave instead to the misguided, swiftly cancelled Rebel Wilson vehicle “Super Fun Night”), the show was buried on a tough night against “The Voice,” and never gathered the fanbase that could have ensured its survival.
Honorable Mentions: There’s all kinds of other shows that could have made this list, but to name but a few, there was charming Dakota Johnson vehicle “Ben & Kate,” Christopher Guest’s forgotten HBO series “Family Tree” starring Chris O’Dowd, the unexpectedly good “Pygmalion” riff “Selfie” with Karen Gillan and John Cho, and Bryan Fuller’s two-season fantasy “Pushing Daisies.” If “New Girl” and “The Mindy Project” could get to five or six seasons, we feel “Happy Endings” deserved more than three, while Fox almost instantly cancelled the cable-star bigamy drama “Lone Star,” but it could have turned into something pretty impressive, as could weird but compelling Biblical-allegory sci-fi drama “Kings” with Ian McShane.
We flirted with including “The Knick,” which recently confirmed that it wouldn’t be back for a third season, but while it’s one of the best TV dramas in recent years, it felt like it told a complete story, so it was hard to say that it was cancelled too soon. At HBO, we could’ve done with more of “Bored To Death” and “Flight Of The Conchords,” while “Luck” was a very good show except for all the horse death, so we perhaps mourn it slightly less than we might have otherwise. Meanwhile, FX dramas “Lights Out” and “The Bridge” were both pretty good, and deserved a little more space and time to develop, while UK dramas “Utopia,” “The Hour” and “Babylon” had shortened runs despite being really rather good.