It’s a well-known fact in the television world that shows are often canceled for a multitude of reasons. These reasons have evolved significantly as the industry has shifted. In the days when cable TV dominated, the decision to cancel a show typically revolved around a simple metric: “is anyone watching this?” However, in the era of streaming—where shows might be released in binge-worthy formats, weekly episodes, or even in batches as Netflix sometimes does—the complexity of these decisions has increased, particularly since viewership statistics are seldom disclosed. Nonetheless, numerous excellent shows have been axed despite their quality.

From a single-season teen comedy from the 1990s that launched numerous stars to a mystery-filled series cut short before it could unravel its secrets, and even a show centered on TV reboots itself, several canceled TV series deserve another chance. Don’t worry if your favorite isn’t mentioned here; this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it highlights some significant cancellings.

With “Girls5Eva,” created by Meredith Scardino, who worked on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” and with Tina Fey and Robert Carlock of “30 Rock” fame as executive producers, audiences get an engaging, fast-paced comedy that was, unfortunately, canceled twice. The premise? Years after their initial fame, Dawn (Sara Bareilles), Gloria (Paula Pell), Summer (Busy Philipps), and Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry) decide to reunite as their pop group Girls5Eva, after a rapper samples their old hit, “Famous 5Eva.” (Note: there are only four mentioned—Ashley (Ashley Park), the fifth member, passed away in a peculiar incident, and she appears only in flashbacks since Park was busy with “Emily in Paris,” possibly limiting her role in the series.)

“Girls5Eva” spent its first two (incredible) seasons on Peacock, got canceled, and moved to Netflix for its (abbreviated but still perfect) third season, at which point it was canceled again, potentially for good this time. There is no question that this show, with its unmatched collection of original songs — we can’t spell out what “B.P.E.” stands for here at Looper, but do yourself a favor and go listen to it — should make a triumphant return, because Summer, Dawn, Gloria, and Wickie’s story just isn’t over yet.

Amazon Prime’s adaptation of the 1992 movie of the same name, “A League of Their Own,” had a lot going for it when it premiered in 2022. Created by Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”) and Abbi Jacobson (“Broad City”), the TV series presents a new take on the familiar territory trod by the movie starring Madonna, Tom Hanks, and Geena Davis — in this version, the Rockford Peaches features new players (and thus new characters) like Carson Shaw (Jacobson), Greta Gill (D’Arcy Carden), Maxime “Max” Chapman (Chanté Adams), and Shirley Cohen (Kate Berlant), just to name a few. 

This version of “A League of Their Own” is, unsurprisingly, quite a bit more modern than its predecessor. For starters, it’s an unabashedly queer show: Max, Greta, and Carson are all firmly in the closet but also attracted to women, and Greta and Carson are actually having a clandestine affair. Rosie O’Donnell, who led the original film, is on hand the owner of a secret gay bar, and Nick Offerman has a delightful guest arc as the team’s coach … but unfortunately, the show got axed in 2023 after it was renewed for a short second and final season (the cancellation was ultimately due to the WGA strike). Thanks to its winning cast and modernized story, “A League of Their Own” definitely deserves another swing.

Like “A League of Their Own,” the Hulu series “High Fidelity” presented a new spin on a beloved movie — Stephen Frears’ 2000 film of the same name — and brought a familiar story into current times by swapping the gender of its lead character. Rob, the protagonist of the movie played by John Cusack, is now “Robyn” — a perfectly cast Zoë Kravitz — who just goes by Rob, but both characters run a record store and both are unlucky in love. The girl Rob’s store, Championship Vinyl, is located in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, and with Rob’s friends Cherise (future Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Simon (David H. Holmes) by her side, she tries to figure out where some of her past relationships went wrong.

Rob loves a “top 5” list (like her big screen predecessor), and both Robs make a list of their top five worst heartbreaks; in the TV series, Rob is almost forced to revisit some of those past flames when she happens to run into them (like Russell “Mac” McCormack, played by Kingsley Ben-Adir). This version of “High Fidelity” is utterly charming, beautifully led by Kravitz, and stocked with great supporting and guest stars like Parker Posey, Thomas Doherty, and even real-life musicians Debbie Harry and Jack Antonoff as themselves. Sadly, Hulu pulled the plug on this show after one season in 2020, and in 2024, Kravitz made sure to call out the network for canceling one of their only shows led by a woman of color. Talk about a record scratch.

There are two shows by Bryan Fuller on this list, but let’s start with “Pushing Daisies.” This delightfully twee series is led by Lee Pace as Ned, a baker specializing in pies who is born with the ability to raise the dead with a single touch. Here’s the problem: if Ned touches whatever he just revived for a second time, it dies again — this time, for good, and he learns this the very hard way when he brings his mother back to life as a child only to watch her perish as she kisses him goodnight. As an adult, Ned runs his pie shop by day and works with a private investigator named Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) by night — Ned revives murder victims, Emerson asks who killed them, and the two men split whatever reward money is available. A major snag arises when Ned finds out that his childhood sweetheart Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel) was murdered; he brings her back to life, but then he can never, ever touch her safely again.

While this sounds like a somewhat dark story, Fuller’s bright, cheery visuals — and the mere presence of human ray of sunshine Kristin Chenoweth, who won an Emmy for her performance as pie shop employee Olive Snook — and quick-witted dialogue keeps “Pushing Daisies” light and sunny somehow. The series was canceled after just two seasons, but if any show has a fanbase clamoring for a comeback, it’s “Pushing Daisies.”

Very few single-season TV shows have as large of a cult following as “Freaks & Geeks,” the high school comedy created by Paul Feig and produced by Judd Apatow that produced a whole bunch of future Hollywood heavyweights. The show splits into two as it follows one group of “freaks” — Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), Daniel Desario (James Franco), Nick Andopolis (Jason Segel), Ken Miller (Seth Rogen), and Kim Kelly (Busy Philipps) — and one group of “geeks,” made up of Lindsay’s younger brother Sam (John Francis Daley), Neil Schweiber (Samm Levine), and Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) at a high school in Michigan. Lindsay, a former “good girl” gone mildly bad, starts hanging out with the “freaks” (much to the chagrin of her former best friend Millie Kentner, played by Sarah Hagan), while Sam toils in obscurity with his two smart but deeply unpopular friends.

You just read that list of cast members — obviously, “Freaks & Geeks” was basically a breeding ground for major industry players. If there ever is a reboot, it might be tough to get big stars like Segel, Rogen, Cardellini, and Philipps together, but they’d probably be delighted to return to their first big playground. Ask pretty much any TV fan which show they’d love to see get a big, flashy reboot, and they’ll probably name-drop “Freaks & Geeks.”

Sure, this one is a little on the nose, but it was definitely canceled before its time. “Reboot” premiered on Hulu in 2022 and followed the cast of a long-dormant hit sitcom “Step Right Up,” which, within the universe of “Reboot,” starred Yale-trained actor Reed Sterling (Keegan Michael-Key), recently divorced duchess Bree Marie Jensen (Judy Greer), recovering drug and alcohol addict Clay Barber (a shockingly excellent Johnny Knoxville), and young star Zack Jackson (Calum Worthy). Years after the first iteration of the show ended, screenwriter Hannah Korman (Rachel Bloom) gets a deal with Hulu, in a very meta touch, to revive it; unfortunately, she has to work with the show’s original creator Gordon Gelman (Paul Reiser), who just so happens to be Hannah’s biological and very estranged father. The two obviously clash, and when Reed, Bree, Zack, and Clay return to their roles, they have to settle into their familiar rhythms again.

Despite the fact that this show was helmed by “Modern Family” creator Steven Levitan and featured a uniformly excellent cast — Michael-Key and Greer, in particular, rarely get to play lead roles, so that was a big treat — but it was still canceled by Hulu after one season. Reboot “Reboot,” Hulu! We’re begging you!

Netflix’s “1899” — created by partners in life and work Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, who also helmed “Dark” for the streamer — was a moody, fascinating, and gorgeously-conceived mystery box show … that only ran for one season, so fans didn’t even get to see how it ended. During its first season, we meet passengers aboard a steamship, the Kerberos, which leaves Southamption in England to bring everyone on board to New York City in 1899. While on board, one passenger — Maura, a doctor traveling in first class played by Emily Beecham — starts having visions, and things get even stranger when the Kerberos starts responding to distress calls from one of its sister ships, the Prometheus. There’s one problem: the Prometheus disappeared at sea four months earlier.

Without getting directly into spoilers, “1899” ends on a massive cliffhanger, making it downright infuriating that Netflix sank this ship after just a single season in 2022. It might not have been the most popular show on the streamer, but “1899” definitely developed a cult following that would happily jump on board if Netflix deigned to bring it back in any form.

Created by Bryan Fuller and based on books by Thomas Harris (including “Red Dragon,” “Hannibal,” and “Hannibal Rising”), “Hannibal,” which aired on NBC for three seasons, presented yet another spin on a familiar character … but a welcome one nonetheless. The show’s protagonist, Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham, plays a similar role to Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in “Silence of the Lambs,” in that he’s a special investigator for the FBI who forges an unexpected connection with forensic psychiatrist and noted serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played perfectly by Mads Mikkelsen. One thing to note: as the series went on, the relationship between Hannibal and Will is decidedly queer-coded and unexpectedly emotional, giving us a deeper look at a relationship between Hannibal Lecter and a law enforcement officer than we’ve necessarily seen before.

“Hannibal” was canceled after just three seasons, and like “Freaks & Geeks” and Fuller’s other series “Pushing Daisies,” fans have been begging for a continuation of this story for quite some time (it came to a close in 2015). Mikkelsen has dropped hints about a possible “Hannibal” reboot or revival over the years, but nothing’s come of his comments as of this writing; still, we can’t rule out that Will and Hannibal’s story will continue somehow.

If you ever watched “Flight of the Conchords,” you know that Rhys Darby is a welcome addition to just about any project, and he’s the ideal person to lead the cast of “Our Flag Means Death,” a funny and shockingly sweet pirate comedy created by David Jenkins. Darby’s character, Stede Bonnet, was a real historical figure known as the “Gentleman Pirate,” and like his real historical counterpart, Darby’s Stede is endearingly bad at running a crew of violent, pilfering pirates. Also like the real Stede, the on-screen Stede ends up surrendering his ship, Revenge, to the infamous pirate Blackbeard, played on the show by Taika Waititi; the major liberty the show takes, in all likelihood, is that Stede and Blackbeard fall in love. 

“Our Flag Means Death” is hilarious, heartfelt, and absolutely delightful series, but unfortunately, the powers that be at HBO decided to end the show’s voyage after two seasons on its proprietary streamer HBO Max. Jenkins himself said he planned for the show to span three seasons, and the story does go unfinished after the season 2 finale, so maybe we’ll see the Revenge sail again eventually. 

Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio’s incredibly inventive comedy series “Schmigadoon!” premiered on Apple TV+ in 2021, led by Keegan Michael-Key and Cecily Strong as New York City doctors Josh Skinner and Melissa Gimble, who decide they need a vacation to spice up their relationship. When they stumble into a small hamlet where everyone sings, they realize they’ve dropped into a full-fledged musical — specifically, the style of “Golden Age musicals” like “The Music Man,” “Brigadoon” (which the title references), “Carousel,” and “South Pacific.” Despite their initial reluctance, Melissa and Josh find themselves consumed by the world they’ve discovered, and their time in the titular town of Schmigadoon does help them improve their relationship.

Season 2 of the series brilliantly switches up the musical timeframe with the subtitle “Schmicago,” which Josh and Melissa find when, bored of their New York lives, they go looking for Schmigadoon again and find something completely different. “Schmicago” obviously references John Kander and Fred Ebb’s famous musical “Chicago,” but you can also find clever references to “Company,” “Cabaret,” and “Sweeney Todd.” Supporting cast members included musical theatre luminaries like Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Aaron Tveit, Dove Cameron, and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, but still, the show closed after two seasons. Paul has said that a third season would have shifted focus to musicals like “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera” and would be called “Into the Schmoods,” so please — someone needs to make that into a reality.

The Netflix series “GLOW” actually has an acronym in its title: it stands for “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” the organization that aspiring actress Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) discovers when she needs to make some money amidst a bunch of unsuccessful auditions. Alongside her friend-turned-foe Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin), who only became a foe after Ruth had an affair with Debbie’s husband, Ruth and a handful of other girls join the league, which is helmed by director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), a blunt and sarcastic guy with a vision of an all-ladies wrestling troupe that he hopes will become a major promotion thanks to the fact that it’s stocked with beautiful women.

There’s a lot to be said about “GLOW” — and all of it is positive — but in terms of its cancellation, the circumstances were, frankly, awful. “GLOW” was renewed for a fourth and final season in 2019 after struggling to even make it to that point (it never made huge inroads with viewers despite critical acclaim and a cult following), but thanks to the COVID-19 virus that swept across the world in 2020, Netflix simply canceled the seemingly guaranteed fourth season before it could even be made. Because of this, season 3 ends on an open-ended note … so perhaps one day, someone will give “GLOW” another shot in the ring.

At first glance, “Happy Endings” seems like another take on “Friends,” but it’s a weirder, darker, and frankly funnier version of an ensemble comedy that’s definitely worth checking out. The entire series opens when Alex Kerkovich (Elisha Cuthbert) leaves her fiancé Dave Rose Jr. (Zachary Knighton) at the altar for a guy wearing rollerblades; when she returns from her honeymoon and admits that she just got cold feet and barely even knew the rollerblade guy, the couple’s friends — Max Blum (Adam Pally), Penny Hartz (Casey Wilson), Alex’s sister Jane Kerkovich-Williams (Eliza Coupe), and her husband Brad Williams (David Wayans Jr.) are forced to split their allegiances. As the show continues, Dave and Alex make up and the gang gets back together, which gives the series the opportunity to put them in all sorts of increasingly hilarious situations. (In one memorable cold open, the rest of the group pranks Max into thinking he won the lottery using the previous day’s winning numbers … and he tells them all to get lost, that he won’t share his winnings, and crows about how rich he is before they reveal the truth. It’s so funny.)

“Happy Endings” got canceled without a real ending after its abbreviated third season, and even though the cast reunited for a one-off special over Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it’s not the same as a real fourth season. If the cast is up for another round, fans of this quirky, charming series would love to see it get an actual “happy ending.”