11 Intriguing TV Shows We Almost Got This Year

In the television industry, pilot season isn’t the same annual event it once was, back when broadcast networks would collectively give the green light close to 100 pilot episodes for consideration. Now networks are developing TV shows year-round and doling out straight-to-series orders, as The Ankler observes, so TV fans don’t hear as much about the pitches that get script orders and the scripts that get pilot orders. But the demises of nearly a dozen contenders from broadcast, cable, and streaming made headlines this year, per The Futon Critic, and we’re eulogizing them all below.

The Tillbrooks

Grey’s Anatomy alum Kate Walsh and Our Flag Means Death grad Rhys Darby starred in this CBS comedy pilot that is, woefully, not going forward. How a multi-camera sitcom would have captured an upper-middle-class family navigating “life, love, and scandal in 19th-century England” will have to remain a mystery.

Do You Want Kids?

This ABC comedy would have followed a married couple in two universes: one in which they have a baby and one in which they don’t. Add in Rachel Bloom (below) as the TV project’s writer, executive producer, and star, and we could have had a small-screen exploration of modern-day womanhood on a par with Bloom’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Jill & Ginger

From The New Adventures of Old Christine creator Kari Lizer came this NBC comedy pilot roughly based on the friendship of real-life therapists Pepper Schwartz (yes, of Married at First Sight fame) and Janet Lever. Jane Lynch played Jill, and Katey Sagal played Ginger, but we’ll just have to wait for another starring vehicle for that duo.

What the Dead Know

Not all Dick Wolf executive-produces turns to gold, as illustrated again by this NBC drama pilot. Based on the memoir of former New York City medical examiner Barbara Butcher, What the Dead Know starred Orange Is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling (below) as a death investigator helping to solve the NYPD’s toughest cases. (Points off for that I Know Who Killed Me-esque title, though.)

Puzzled

Another interesting prospect with a questionable title, this drama pilot had New Girl alum Damon Wayans Jr. playing a former college athlete whose traumatic brain injury gives him a unique crime-solving edge. TV needs more Wayanses, but perhaps the issue of traumatic brain injuries in sports needs a more serious small-screen treatment.

Key Witness

It was a tricky pilot development season for procedurals on NBC, apparently. Here, we would have had Bones star Emily Deschanel headlining a drama about a trailblazing psychologist, based on real-life expert profiler and author Dr. Ann Burgess, who cracks cases by shifting her investigation to the victims instead of just the perpetrators (and was also the basis of a Mindhunter character).

Movers

This FX prospect was billed as “an improvised workplace comedy revolving around the erratic and codependent lives of a crew of movers.” Robert Ban Garant and Cathy Shim, both of Reno 911! fame, co-created the pilot and were set to join a cast that also included WWE star Becky Lynch née Rebecca Quin. Alas, FX decided not to move Movers forward.

Untitled Witness Protection Pilot

It may not have had a title, but this FX project had major bona fides, including The Sopranos creator David Chase as the original screenwriter, Gina Welch (Clipped) and Hannah Fidell (A Teacher) as showrunners, and Alison Brie (below), Aidan Gillen, Pablo Schreiber, and Zoë Chao as stars. Brie would have played a high-end D.C. madam turning on her partner and escaping to witness protection in Maine alongside her adolescent daughter.

Don’t Get High

This almost-ran had a logline of legend: “An alpha dork and her merry gang of dweebs start an anti-drug group at their high school to make friends and influence people. It doesn’t go well.” Plus, the cast included comedy faves Michelle Buteau, Casey Wilson, and Tony Hale. Alas, Hulu expelled the pilot.

Group Chat

Hulu also “left the chat” for this pilot created by Black-ish mastermind Kenya Barris, based on the book The Love Playbook: Rules for Love, Sex, and Happiness by former MTV VJ La La Anthony (who would have starred in the comedy series), and executive-produced and narrated by needs-no-introduction Kim Kardashian. Undeterred, Anthony and Kardashian are reteaming for a new potential comedy series at Hulu, Deadline reports.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale

In the most disheartening and head-scratching pilot demise of the season, Hulu cast its high-profile Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot into the Hellmouth for several reported reasons. Written by sisters Nora and Lilla Zuckerman (Poker Face) and directed by Chloé Zhao (Hamnet), New Sunnydale would have had Ryan Kiera Armstrong (The Lowdown) playing a new Slayer alongside an older Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar). But for execs at Hulu, the first episode certainly wasn’t the Chosen One.