Planned TV Shows That Should Be Canceled Right Now
It's hard to fill up 24 hours of television every day, seven days a week, year-round, so it's understandable when a network's frantic flailing at terrible ideas results in a few episodes of unwatchable trash. There are many interesting TV shows that are now airing or in production, but there are hundreds that are slowly crawling their way out of the murky, idiotic depths, ready to destroy television entertainment as we know it. Here are a few TV shows in various stages of production that need to be stopped at all costs, before it's too late.
Xena: Warrior Princess
Without the glow of nostalgia, the original Xena: Warrior Princess isn't that great. A spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena wasn't even supposed to live past her third appearance, but show creator Robert Tapert elaborated on Xena so his recently-divorced girlfriend Lucy Lawless would have something to do. The original Xena ran until 2001 and filled up six seasons, but now NBC is planning a full reboot of the series without Lawless in the title role. While still in the early stages of ideation, Xena hardly seems like an idea to resurrect, especially if we have to deal with a "modern" Xena, as some sources report.
Uncle Buck
The Uncle Buck reboot, if you can call it that, is too far into production to stop, but that doesn't mean we have to support it. ABC has decided to puke on the legacy of John Candy's greatest film by remaking it into a TV series starring Mike Epps and Nia Long, also known as "the girl who wasn't even good enough for The Cleveland Show." Why the show has to leech off of the legacy of the original Uncle Buck is a mystery, because writing a show about a weird uncle with a completely different name can't really be that difficult, right?
Heartbeat
The elevator pitch for Heartbeat tells us that Heartbeat is "a look at the professional and personal life of a heart transplant surgeon." It's not clear who determined that we needed yet another medical drama where a doctor's personal life interferes with their professional life, but the whole thing just sounds like a really misguided fight to make anyone give a damn about another distracted doctor. The trailer reveals cliche after cliche and can't decide if this is a comedy or a drama. How about we just make it neither and never talk about it again?
I Do Crew
The CW, known for shows like The Flash and The Vampire Diaries, is developing a show about a couple who plans a destination wedding, and all of their friends who have to deal with them being selfish idiots with unrealistic expectations. While there's little more than a premise in place, written by a lady who's mostly known for being in the intolerable rich-people anti-comedy The Suite Life on Deck, we definitely don't need any more shows about the wealthy and their pointless foibles. We already have Modern Family and whatever the Kardashians are squeezing out these days. We get it—rich people are people too, except better.
Little Big Shots
Steve Harvey hosts an Elementary school version of America's Got Talent, except everyone knows that kids aren't really good at anything. They're good at stuff within their respective age range, but you're never going to find a six-year-old who can out-dunk Magic or a baby guitarist who's going to do anything better than Django Reinhardt, so stop looking. Art is a product of experience and suffering, kids, so while you might be a cute spectacle for now, it's your parents who are the real geniuses here... your parents and their new in-ground swimming pool that you can't even use until you finish your homework, sucker.
Little Women
No, we're not talking about the current "reality" TV series on Lifetime that features a bunch of trashy, irredeemable, smaller ladies. Instead, The CW is trying to make life on Earth worse once again by re-envisioning Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel into a dystopian Philadelphia, as if you need to imagine that, in which four sisters attempt to unravel a conspiracy theory, because that's exactly what happened in the book. Probably. Again, it's another weird instance of sucking the life out of a familiar name in order to get a few more curious views, and nobody wins.
Paradiso
If you think that the only thing missing from Cirque du Soleil is the fact that it doesn't come on after The Simpsons, your prayers are about to be answered...probably. Fox is currently working on a pilot for a drama based loosely on the troubling, creepy world of the artsy circus, which would tell the story of a quirky, bold girl chasing her dreams in a Soleil-based nightclub. Because erotic clowns are a thing now, Paradiso would definitely not be an intolerable hour of who-the-hell-cares that could be better spent on new episode of The X-Files. Absolutely not.
Moreau
Based on the 1896 book by H.G. Wells, Moreau would be yet another adaptation of the story of an island of experimental humanoid creatures Frankensteined together by the nefarious Dr. Moreauâ—except this time, the good doctor is a lady. Film adaptations have been notoriously tricky, from the 1996 Marlon Brando abomination, to a slightly better 1977 version starring Burt Lancaster, but expanding the story into a TV series probably won't fare much better...especially on CBS, which couldn't even carry a Planet of the Apes drama. Remember Moonlight and Threshold? Neither does anyone else.
Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters
Hasbro has been trying to bring back the old Stretch Armstrong brand for years, and has been shopping the idea for an animated series to studios for as far back as we can remember. Netflix finally bit. Created only to sell toys that aren't even currently on shelves, Stretch Armstrong & the Flex Fighters focuses on some teenagers who, of course, get mixed up with a bunch of chemicals and become stretchy. As if a teenage boy with infinite flexibility would ever leave his room, these guys presumably go out and fight crime with expensive accessories that you, too, can buy at home. Just stop, Hasbro. Stop now.