Brilliant But Cancelled

Life after the ax

We all have our favorite TV shows that die before their
time. I was rather partial to Dana Delaney’s 2001 creepy family drama Pasadena (Desperate Housewives before Desperate Housewives existed). Many on
the City staff loved HBO’s
complicated tale of carnie folk and destiny, Carnivale. Now certain shows that
didn’t quite make it are getting a second shot at life at
www.brilliantbutcancelled.com, a Web spinoff of cable
net Bravo that cherry picks some quality TV programming that deserves to be
seen.

Not every show can make the Brilliant But
Cancelled cut. First, unaired episodes of the series have to exist. Second, the
Bravo folks have to consider it “brilliant.” And third, they have to be able to
get the rights, and since NBC is the parent company you’ll find a bit of an
overrepresentation from that network’s castoffs.

The site’s current crop tends toward crime dramas. Among
them are EZ Streets, the 1996 Ken
Olin/Joe Pantoliano vehicle; Touching Evil, the American version of a Brit show about a renegade
cop; Gideon Oliver, with Louis
Gossett Jr. playing a crime-solving anthropology professor (yeah, I don’t
know); and from the archives, Delvecchio, with a pre-Taxi
Judd Hirsch, and Johnny Staccato,
a 1959 noir starring indie filmmaker Joe Cassavetes and pre-Bewitched Elizabeth Montgomery. There’s also the never-aired Jason Bateman sitcom The Jake Effect, about a lawyer who
ditches the big bucks to become a teacher.