It's bad enough when a TV show is yanked from the schedules sharpish because it's offensive – think the 'Hitler lives next door to a Jewish couple' sitcom Heil Honey I'm Home!, or Who's Your Daddy?, the reality show in which an adoptee had to guess which of 25 men was her biological father.
But it's almost more embarrassing when a series is axed after a single episode for being just plain terrible. These eight shows weren't offensive, just offensively bad.
1. Emily's Reasons Why Not
Based on Carrie Gerlach's 2004 novel, Emily's Reasons Why Not starred Heather Graham as the title character – an LA girl whose career is thriving, but whose romantic life is floundering.
It scored a decent debut audience of 6.2m, but critical reaction to this watered-down Sex and the City was so overwhelmingly negative that ABC immediately axed the series, never airing the five completed episodes after the pilot.
ABC allegedly bought the series from Sony before they'd seen the pilot episode – so at least it seems everyone here learned a valuable lesson.
2. Public Morals
Who knew that gritty cop drama NYPD Blue once spawned a sitcom?
From that show's co-creator Steven Bochco, 1996 comedy series Public Morals followed a police vice squad and featured the character of John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup), imported over from the parent show.
Dropped by CBS after a single outing, the series was called "boorish" and "not so much a comedy as a crime" – with Brochtrup swiftly returning to NYPD Blue. This is why The Wire never scored a laugh-a-minute spin-off.
3. Osbournes Reloaded
Variety shows are a hard thing to get right. FOX gave us this attempt with 2009's favourite reality family, featuring stunts, celebrity cameos, a live musical performance from Fall Out Boy and sketches with Ozzy Osbourne in drag.
In a stunning development, critics slammed Osbournes Reloaded – one calling it the "worst variety show ever" – and that was after the original hour-long premiere had been cut down to 35 minutes by the network. Five more episodes went unaired.
We think the original working title of Osbournes: Loud and Dangerous might've been more fitting.
4. South of Sunset
A detective show fronted by The Eagles frontman Glenn Frey? Who could've predicted that South of Sunset would be a disaster?
Starring Frey as a former Hollywood security guy who starts a new career as a private investigator, the show was pulled by CBS after a single outing on October 27, 1993.
It had already been pushed back in the schedules, with CBS refusing to supply critics with advance review copies – almost always a sign that a TV show or movie will not be worth the wait.
5. The Hasselhoffs
Technically, David Hasselhoff's reality series had two episodes broadcast, but they were aired back-to-back, so A&E's The Hasselhoffs was still canned after a single outing.
Ironically, the series – which pulled in a peak of just 718k viewers – was about Hasselhoff's attempts to resuscitate his career. Still, we're sure it was a hit in Germany.
6. Lawless
Sometimes, a one-time NFL player proves they have the charisma and skills to make the transition into screen acting – just look at Terry Crews.
Sometimes, though, you get Brian Bosworth of the Seattle Seahawks. Bosworth fronted the extremely short-lived detective series Lawless in 1997, in which he played an ex-special forces operative called – we shit you not – John Lawless.
FOX terminated the show after the pilot. "Lawless did not meet our expectations," said a blunt Peter Roth, then president of FOX. "Creatively or from a ratings perspective."
7. Quarterlife
The year is 2008 and MySpace is the most hip 'n' happening thing on the interwebs. So you can understand why NBC decided to pick up the MySpace web series Quarterlife, about a gang of artist pals "coming of age in the digital generation", with hopes of hoovering up a youth audience.
But the experiment was short-lived – NBC opted not to air any more of the webisodes after the show's first TV outing drew the network's lowest ratings in almost 20 years.
Yeah... that internet television, it'll never catch on.
