"Put the money on the screen."
If TV executives all had framed needlepoint samplers over their desks, that's what they'd say. (After "Can I get a receipt for this latté?".) If a show's going to cost a lot, it has to look expensive, and more importantly, it has to earn its keep by bringing in millions of eager viewers.
But it doesn't always work out that way. For every Game of Thrones (costs a fortune, makes a fortune) there's a televisual turd in the punchbowl. Here are just 14 of the most costly flops ever to hang around the bottom of the TV schedules like a bad smell, longing to be axed.
1. Terra Nova (2011)
It had everything going for it: Spielberg as producer! Dinosaurs! Time travel! It was pitched as Jurassic Park meets Avatar, with the last, choking remains of humanity sending colonists back in time to the Cretaceous era to keep the human race going. Sadly audiences didn't care much for the humans in question (led by Monarch of the Glen's Jason O'Mara and Mistresses' Shelley Conn). And the plot wasn't a million miles away from ITV's considerably cheaper Primeval.
Even the dinos lacked the necessary bite: "I'd rather see one dinosaur every four episodes that I totally believed than something roaring every hour that I don't quite buy," wrote Entertainment Weekly.
It cost a reported $100 million for 13 episodes, which works out at almost exactly $1 per viewer per episode. (We'll spare you the maths: that's 7.5m viewers.)
2. Supertrain (1979)
"The gold standard against which all other TV bombs are measured," decreed The Onion's AV Club. The idea was to replicate the long-term success of The Love Boat, essentially a soap set on a luxury liner, but on a futuristic atomic-powered train. Never mind that trains in the US are basically used only by freight and hobos.
Where The Love Boat had sunshine, open space and romance, Supertrain had cramped sets and low lighting. The set alone cost $5m to make (nearly 40 years ago), the model trains crashed and crew overtime spiralled out of control as they tried to make the show work in time for broadcast. It lasted nine episodes before NBC pulled the plug, fearing total financial collapse.
3. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2015)
Last year's lavish BBC fantasy adaptation about an alternative British history peopled by magicians and demonic beings may have looked the Georgian business, but it only scraped between 1.5m and 2m viewers for most of its seven-part run. That's about the same as The Great British Pottery Throwdown, which is made on a budget of two and sixpence.
Jonathan Strange needed fancy special effects, period costumes and multiple location shoots, all of which means heavy investment. In fact, Digital Spy has heard reliable rumours that it was the most expensive drama the BBC has ever made. Well, at least the money was on the screen…
4. Camelot (2011)
It's lucky for Chris Chibnall that his next project after Camelot was the huge hit Broadchurch, because this is the kind of show that can bury a showrunner. He had originally been approached to develop Merlin for the BBC, but they went with a different (successful) vision of the show.
We can only assume Camelot is the Merlin that could have been. The story of young King Arthur and his relationships with wacky half-sister Morgana (Eva Green) and a bald Merlin (Joseph Fiennes) (we'll repeat that: Joseph Fiennes), the epic fantasy was a co-production between the Starz network in the US and British production company GK-TV.
Despite trying to be sexy and a bit weird, however, the show fell flat. The Twilight SagaTwilight Saga's Jamie Campbell-Bower was more annoying than inspiring, and the rest of the show followed suit. One critic was moved to write, "It's dull and talky and its first three episodes offer few surprises in storytelling."
Given each episode cost a reported $7m, that was that.
5. Flashforward (2009)
Oh look, here's Joseph Fiennes again. He starred as an FBI agent investigating a baffling global event where everyone fell unconscious for 187 seconds and saw a vision of six months into the future. Attempting to capitalise on the high-concept-mystery vibe of Lost (and co-starring Lost's Dominic Monaghan), it had a great premise.
But nothing else. Ratings went into freefall and ABC shut it down after one season. Ironically, they just didn't see it coming. (Literally so: they actually filmed a season finale that set up another flashforward.)
6. Battlestar Galactica (1979)
Hard to believe given the scale of its cult following and the success of its reboot in 2004, but the original story of a travelling human society in search of their semi-fabled "missing colony", Earth, was considered an enormous liability at the time. It was axed after 17 episodes.
Glen A Larson managed to persuade network ABC to start it up again the following year and scaled back the budget by setting Galactica 1980 on Earth, but it only lasted 10 episodes.
7. The Bionic Woman (2007)
Anyone can get a second chance in the States, but Michelle Ryan's transformation from Walford's Zoe fackin' Slater into the polished, cybernetically-enhanced Jaime Sommers was an eye-opener by any standard.
The pilot allegedly cost $7.4m to make, with a further $6m per episode and a promotional budget of $15m. Where did the money go? Though the writers' strike of 2007 didn't help matters, the show was already losing viewers and it got shut down after eight episodes.
8. Father of the Pride (2004)
An entirely computer-generated animated series about Siegfried and Roy's white lions. For adults.
The technology wasn't there yet (CG is the standard for animation today) and it didn't help that Roy Horn was attacked by one of his own tigers before the show got to air.
File under catastrophic misjudgment.
9. Kings (2009)
"You'll love it!" the show's creator Michael Green presumably pitched to NBC, "it's the story of King David, but told in a modern context, with Ian McShane from Deadwood as the King Saul figure! It's one of the greatest Biblical stories reinvented for a modern audience." NBC did indeed love it, but their marketing division did not.
"When the time came for the marketing," Green said, "there was a very deliberate, outspoken, loud desire articulated by them that, 'We are not going to say King David'."
So basically they spent all that money making a show about a Bible story, then didn't tell anyone it was a Bible story. So the expected core audience of Jews and Christians who might have thought that was a cool thing never found out about it. And at $4m per episode, SHWIIIING fell the axe.
10. Viva Laughlin (2007)
"Jaw-droppingly wrong-headed," said Newsday.
"Is it the worst show in the history of television?" asked the New York Times.
It's fair to say, then, that Viva Laughlin stumbled out of the gate. An adaptation of the quirky BBC drama Blackpool, in which David Morrissey sang and danced his way round a tale of murder and casinos in Lancashire, this one starred Hugh Jackman and Melanie Griffith and got cancelled after just two episodes, just one of which cost $6.8m.
11. The Event (2010)
You're setting up fairly major expectations by calling your show The Event, and, sadly, those expectations weren't met. Or at least weren't met on an appropriate budget. The Non-Event was the story of aliens living among us; it sputtered and was shut down after one season.
12. The Fugitive (2000)
It's tough to follow Harrison Ford in a role, as Tim Daly found out. Tim who? EXACTLY. Presumably no one else they offered it to was willing to put their head over the parapet.
To be fair, The Fugitive was a successful TV show in the '60s before it was a movie, but they couldn't recreate the magic second time around.
13. Manimal (1983)
For viewers aged ten in the 1980s, Manimal was second only to The A-Team (or possibly Knight Rider) for excitement at teatime on Saturdays. For anyone over ten, it was a laughable bunch of balls starring Simon MacCorkindale (who later found a safe harbour in Holby City and Casualty).
Dr Jonathan Chase had the power to turn into animals (any animal at all – but always a hawk or a black panther) to fight crime. And every time he changed, he did it exactly the same way, because somehow the budget – though huge for the time – wouldn't stretch to a second transformation sequence.
We still have nightmares about his bulging hand. (Watch the clip above.)
14. Cop Rock (1990)
"We had a 187 at the 7-11 on the corner of 4th and Main… Two caucasians of the male persuasion put a bullet through the cashier's brain…" Sing along now!
This show really happened. NYPD Blue, but with singing! At $2m per episode, ABC must have really thought it was going to work.
It did not.
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