It's always a gamble, green-lighting a TV show. Even if a series pitch has a killer concept or a big name attached – or both – there's never 100% certainty that it'll be a hit.
So you've got to feel a little bad for the network bosses who, back in the day, doubted ideas that went on to become some of the biggest telly hits of all time.
We bet they're kicking themselves now for turning their noses up at – or in some cases outright rejecting – this lot.
1. Friends
Somehow, test audiences who got to see the pilot episode of Friends before the general public didn't fall for the charms of the Central Perk six. A report from the time carried this damning verdict: "Most viewers felt the show was not very entertaining, clever or original."
NBC reportedly agreed, considering Friends one of its lesser efforts from the 1994 season, but had little else to fall back on for its fall schedule. The show landed a series pick-up and... well, you know what happened next.
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
No-one was happy with Joss Whedon's first stab at Buffy – a 1992 film starring Kristy Swanson as the Slayer – not even Whedon himself.
He was ready to move on when a call from producer Gail Berman convinced him that there was still life in the concept. But even once Whedon was back on board, rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a television series was no easy task: FOX and NBC both rejected the pitch and it was only thanks to the fledgling WB network taking a chance on Buffy that the show ever made it to air.
3. The Big Bang Theory
CBS outright rejected The Big Bang Theory at first, after failing to see much promise in the show's original pilot. But the network did give the show's creators another shot, demanding some major retooling for their second attempt.
Gone from pilot 2.0 were the show's original female leads – streetwise Katie (Amanda Walsh) and scientist Gilda (Iris Bahr) – replaced by Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Howard (Simon Helberg) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar).
"[The original pilot] sucked," series co-creator Chuck Lorre later admitted. "But there were two remarkable things that worked perfectly, and that was Johnny [Galecki] and Jim [Parsons, as Leonard and Sheldon]. We rewrote the thing entirely and then we were blessed with Kaley and Simon and Kunal."
4. The Sopranos
The Sopranos pretty much put HBO on the map as a major player, so it's perhaps not too surprising that the lowly cable network wasn't creator David Chase's first port of call for his unorthodox gangster drama.
First, he shopped it to the big networks, including CBS – which allegedly objected not to the show's violence, but to the idea of Tony spending time in therapy. Luckily HBO, looking to expand its slate of original programming after early success with its prison drama Oz, saw the potential in Slate's concept.
5. Stranger Things
No-one could have predicted how big a hit Stranger Things would become after it launched on Netflix in the summer of 2016. That said, you might still be surprised to learn that the Duffer brothers' supernatural thriller tinged with '80s nostalgia was rejected "15 to 20 times by various networks".
They reportedly balked at the idea of a show intended for older viewers that had kids as the lead characters. "There was a week where we were like, 'This isn't going to work, because people don't get it,'" Matt Duffer revealed.
Well, we're happy things turned out the way they did. Imagine having to wait a week between Stranger Things episodes!
6. Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan almost lost confidence in his Breaking Bad concept after hearing about a show that was already on air – Weeds – that had, on the surface, a similar-ish premise.
He was convinced to press on, but early pitch meetings did not go well. Gilligan would later describe a conversation with HBO as "the worst meeting [he] ever had".
"The woman we were pitching to could not have been less interested – not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died. My agents could never even get her on the phone afterward to even say no."
AMC, of course, later achieved huge success with the show that HBO couldn't even be bothered to properly reject.
7. The Walking Dead
Quite a few accusations were thrown around as part of a legal dispute between AMC and The Walking Dead co-creator Frank Darabont. But one revelation that's particularly pertinent here comes from Darabont's agent Bruce Vinokour.
In his deposition, Vinokour said that the TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic "received a pass from NBC, where the script was originally developed. We received a pass from ABC. We did not submit the script to CBS... it wasn't appropriate for CBS's audience. And we received a pass from Fox. And so we had received passes from the networks."
HBO was reportedly interested, but asked for the show's gore to be toned down, something that exec producer Gale Anne Hurd refused to do. So that's 2-0 to AMC.
8. Preacher
A slightly different one, this. Preacher almost never got made not because of network apathy, but because of complicated rights issues.
Hollywood had been working to adapt Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's darkly funny comic since the 1990s, with Doctor Who director Rachel Talalay and later Sam Mendes hired to helm a movie version at various points.
The film never materialised, but it meant that the rights were all in a tangle when Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wanted to develop a TV version. "We couldn't get the rights to it," said Rogen. "We couldn't get through to whoever was controlling the rights... various producers and people like that."
The whole thing was eventually unravelled, with AMC – those guys again – ordering a pilot in 2014. Two seasons have followed, with a third set for later in 2018.
