The 5 Best TV Shows That Survived Cancelation

Getting canceled doesn’t always mean the credits have rolled for the last time. Thanks to fan campaigns, streaming revivals, and tantalizing loose threads, these excellent shows all came back from the dead, sometimes more than once.

I won’t say every title on the list came back stronger than before—most of them seem to have peaked before their cancelation—but they still go to show that a cancelation needn’t be the end of the line.

5

Arrested Development

Arrested Development is a whip-smart sitcom with layers upon layers of jokes, references, setups, and punchlines that no other show could hope to rival. It follows Michael Bluth and his family of socialite layabouts, constantly scheming to escape one sort of financial catastrophe or another.

Upon release, the show was critically acclaimed, but it struggled to build a large audience (that came later), possibly due to the pace at which it throws gags, exposition, and character details at you. All that makes it brilliant for rewatching, but difficult to jump into.

As a result, the show was canceled after three excellent seasons. However, Netflix knew there was still money in the banana stand, and revived it a staggering seven years later! That’s right, Netflix used to revive canceled shows instead of making a habit of canceling them.

Sadly, the new season—which was designed to let you watch episodes in any order—was bloated and confusing, leaving viewers to feel they’d made a huge mistake by hoping it could live up to the show’s heyday. A later recut tightened it up, though, and we even got a fifth season a few years later.

Netflix

Michael Bluth’s dysfunctional family is in trouble and he’s the only one who stands a chance at saving them. This quick-witted comedy overflows with gags, callbacks, and absurdity.

4

Firefly

Firefly is often used as a go-to example of an excellent show cut down in its prime. We only got a single, 14-episode season of this sci-fi western from the mind of Joss Whedon. It follows the nine-person crew of the Serenity, a spacecraft they use for smuggling, scavenging, and occasionally saving the day across the Verse.

In just 14 episodes, Firefly introduces us to a cast of fully realized characters, with rich backstories and exquisite chemistry. After its quick cancelation, the show benefited from strong DVD sales and built a large, dedicated fan base eager to get past the cliffhanger ending and find a resolution to the story.

Effective fan campaigns actually led to the revival of Firefly. However, unlike every other entry on this list, that revival came in the form of a follow-up movie, Serenity, which aims to tie up the loose ends and provide a fitting conclusion to the show. It’s a great movie, but many of us are still left wanting more.

Firefly is available to stream on Hulu, but you’ll need to rent the Serenity elsewhere to get a fitting ending.

Hulu

Firefly‘s short-lived, 14-episode run is available to stream on Hulu. You’ll need to go elsewhere to watch the follow-up movie, Serenity, though.

3

Twin Peaks

I was a mere babe at the time, but I’ve been told that Twin Peaks was a phenomenon when it debuted in 1990. It’s a surreal, offbeat, horror from the inimitable mind of David Lynch that follows FBI agent Dale Cooper’s investigation of a teen murder.

After losing its regular time slot, Twin Peaks was initially put on hiatus partway through its second season. That spells cancelation for most properties, but a letter-writing campaign from fans saw the show back on the air for the last six episodes of the season. That was all they got, though, as it wasn’t renewed for a third season despite a confusing cliffhanger ending.

Instead of a continuation, though, we got a prequel film the following year, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The offcuts from this film were later turned into a second movie, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces. Alas, neither received a strong critical response, although the show continued to garner more fans and a cult classic status as the years went on.

Over a decade later, Showtime revived the show for a third and final season, titled Twin Peaks: The Return. Although some fans felt jarred by its shift in tone, many consider this to be the greatest piece of work Lynch ever produced, making it a damn fine ending to Twin Peaks.

Paramount Plus

Strange, surreal, offbeat, and unexpected, Twin Peaks is a show unlike any other, and you can catch all three seasons on Paramount+.

Before Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon gave us Community, a sitcom following a ragtag study group in Glendale Community College. Leading the pack is Jeff Winger, sent back to college after being caught out as a fraudulent lawyer. But fan favorites have got to be Troy and Abed, pop-culture-obsessed roommates and lovable weirdos.

Although the show took a little while to find its footing—which is outlandishly themed episodes with tenuous links to reality, like school-wide paintball competitions, space capsule simulations, and epic pillow fort wars—it soon developed a dedicated fan base and something of a cult following.

Despite that, showrunner Dan Harmon was fired before season four went into production, allegedly due to his erratic behavior and management style. Nevertheless, the darkest timeline of Community lived on under new leadership, and the poor response of a Harmon-less season four led to his reinstatement for a fifth season.

Harmon’s return brought back some of the magic of earlier episodes, but despite the repeated promise of “six seasons and a movie” made by the study group, NBC canceled Community after season five. Fans didn’t need to wait long, though, as Yahoo! picked it up and produced a sixth season the following year.

By this point, the study group had changed dramatically. Troy and Abed had been split up years earlier, with Donald Glover leaving the show to focus on his music as Childish Gambino. Chevy Chase had a somewhat dramatic exit following bad behavior on set. And finally, Yvette Nicole Brown took time to care for her family instead of returning for the last season.

Nevertheless, season six has some excellent episodes, making it a hard pill to swallow that we never got any more after that. Reportedly, the actors were now too expensive for another season, and although there have been plenty of rumors, we’ve still never gotten that movie.

Peacock

Join Jeff Winger and his study group a Glendale Community College for madcap antics and kooky classes.

1

Futurama

Futurama doesn’t get canceled, it just gets shoved into a cryogenic freezer for a few years, thaws out, quips about the experience, and goes on as though nothing happened. It follows Fry, Leela, Bender, and the other employees of Planet Express as they jet to strange worlds and meet stranger characters in the year 3,000.

Having given us The Simpsons, Matt Groening developed Futurama as a new animated comedy for Fox in 1999. Groening claims that Fox executives never liked Futurama, and so after four seasons of erratic airing, despite strong reviews and fan response, it eventually canceled the show.

For a few years, Futurama lived on as reruns on the Adult Swim network. But in a bid to revive the show, four straight-to-DVD films were produced, which later got cut into half-hour episodes to form a fifth season. These movies are excellent and succeeded in getting Futurama revived for Comedy Central, with all the original voice cast.

We got a few good years of new episodes, but sure enough, the show was slated to be canceled again in 2013. At least Comedy Central gave advance warning, allowing for a sweet finale for Fry and Leela. Futurama is one of my favorite comfort shows, but the ending was so strong I’d have been happy if that was all we got.

Ten years passed and we got some more good news, though, Hulu had picked up the show for even more seasons. We’ve had two new seasons already—they aren’t the best, but they’re better than nothing—and there are two more on the way.

Hulu

Fry and the Planet Express crew rocketed onto Hulu with two new seasons, coming ten years after Futurama‘s last cancelation, and two more on the way.

At their height, all of these shows were phenomenal, but that didn’t save any of them from cancelation. Some even got canceled multiple times, despite surging fan bases. But each example goes to show that cancelation doesn’t have to be the end for a show.

With enough fan support, a big enough cliffhanger ending, and a little bit of luck, there’s always hope we’ll get more of our favorite short-lived TV shows.