My mother's been trying to get me to watch this, but I've terribly short of time lately.

I agree with those who said Firefly, though I haven't seen the show. I watched Serenity, which I enjoyed. I'm sure I would enjoy it more if I had seen the show. I'm more than willing to watch it and will probably get to it soonish.

Otherwise, I vote Arrested Development. I'm not familiar enough with television to comment otherwise.

Twin Peaks - although, to be fair, it was spinning its wheels at the end. But fans deserved something more than a series of cliffhangers-never-to-be-resolved. The ultimate slap in the face is that, given a chance to do a big screen movie, David Lynch went the prequel route rather than tossing the fans a bone.

Blake's 7 - I still contend this was the best science fiction television show to air anytime, anywhere. Better than Battlestar Galactica (which I adore), Babylon 5 (which was at times brilliant, although not during seasons 1 or 5), etc. But oh what an ending! People who talk about how brilliantly David Chase concluded The Sopranos should watch how Blake's 7 ended.

Sorry about the messed-up quoting from my last post!

I agree to a point. I think the mark of a good show is that it can be applicable to any period in history, no matter when the show is set. Take That 70's Show. It began as a gimmick (a show set in the past), but then began to not focus on the era to a point where you could pretty much take any script, set it in modern times, and still have it make sense and not seem anachronistic. That was something I appreciated about it, and also Futurama. The material transcended the setting. Idiocracy is another example. It's set in the future, but is clearly about the present.

And I was referring to the movie MASH and the early years, not the preachy older seasons.

Wow, better than Battlestar and Babylon 5 - that is high praise. As a huge sci-fi fan, I will have to seek this out immediately.

Was a shocker of a movie as well, really struggled to get through it.

I'll second all the calls for Firefly and Pushing Daisies. I'll also throw in Dead Like Me. DLM ran for two seasons on Showtime before getting the ax, and that's too bad. It was a brilliant show that was gone too early.

I agree with Freaks and Geeks, and to a lesser extent Firefly, though my wife later became far more hooked on the show's DVDs than I. But I think Miracles deserved a much bigger shot than ABC gave it ... 10 million "consistent" viewers, on Monday nights, despite having weeks of cancellations due to coverage of the then-new Iraq war and the Michael Jackson crap from that European director. The show had a lot of potential to it, I thought. Ulrich got a second shot with Jericho, but I think Miracles had some individual episodes which suggested it had far more potential from a writing standpoint.

Angel as well. They'd had their best ratings in a long while, and tried to force the issue and get an earlier renewal instead of being picked up at the last possible moment as usual, and had it backfire completely. Oops. Supposedly the execs later regretted their decision, but by then everyone had moved on.

John Doe was a nice easy show to watch.

Anyone else see John From Cincinnati? Still in the air as to whether it was good, bad, or just weird.

There are just way too many good shows that were cancelled far to early. Most of my favourite shows barely seem to make it past season 2 before getting the can.

Arrested Development
Carnivàle
Dead Like Me
Deadwood
Firefly
Freaks & Geeks
Futurama
Hidden Hills
Pushing Daisies
Surface
Undeclared
Veronica Mars
Wonderfalls

firefly boy oh boy does it make me sad.

I'm in complete agreement with everyone here on Firefly. I can't even buy the DVD because it makes me too angry and upset to know there are no more episodes. We can all hope there will be another movie soon.

A few others:

Futurama
Star Trek:Enterprise
Pushing Daisies
Jericho

Won't be one if you don't buy the DVDs ... we have to speak with our money on this stuff. I have my "Brilliant But Cancelled" DVD collection because I figure if the producers are actually able to get a DVD released of something "cancelled," buying the product is the only way we can really show our support. That's what killed "Serenity" though ... Firefly did well on DVD, but the people who bought the DVDs were the ones going to see the film. And even though the film was independent of the TV show, very few people went to see it who weren't already "converted." Including me. I didn't discover the show until after the film was already on DVD. And a film that makes $40M in theaters after being revived from TV cancellation isn't going to get a sequel, sadly.

Makes you wonder why he was dumb enough to bring his new show "Dollhouse" back to Fox. I hope he got some serious contract goodness that guarantees him episodes will run and in order.

Not going to mention a bunch of the brilliant shows you guys have listed but I would have liked some more episodes of the live action version of 'The Tick', I still watch the DVD's quite often.

Deadwood broke my heart. Even more so when the promised movie length finale never eventuated.

Absolutely agree on that one, Deadwood deserved a far better send off than it ended up with. My hope now since the finale movie never happened are some nice Blu Ray releases of the series so I can enjoy what is one of the better shows this decade in nice HD like the original broadcasts.

I don't mind shows being cancelled if they have a suitable finish. What really irks me is the shows that are supposed to finish a certain way but never have the chance. There are probably loads of examples but ones that spring to mind are:

Samurai Jack - one of my favourite ever shows (top 3?). It's premature finish wouldn't be so bad if they didn't allude to certain outcomes (e.g. Jack with crown)
The Nine - aired on British TV last year. If I'd known that it was cancelled I wouldn't have started watching but by that point I was a few episodes in and carried on regardless.
Dungeons & Dragons / Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors - The latter is again a contender for my favourite ever TV show and it's borderline cruelty that neither of these shows got the ending they deserved. D&D especially had some great moments towards the end making it all the more heartbreaking.

I'm currently watching the second series of Pushing Daisies now and it's disappointing to learn here that it has been cancelled

It's Firefly for me. I mean, that show didn't even get a full season. I was really getting into it by the time it got to Objects in Space, and it felt like it was gearing up for another story arc. But alas, it got axed.

Someone had once posted of a great opening line if the show had continued beyond that last episode:

"Early's late."

Most Definitely!

Farscape.
Even though it had 4 seasons and a mini-series, I would have loved to see more. Here's to the (hopefully) upcoming webisodes.

Star Trek Enterprise.
Because I'm a huge Trek geek and I felt it was really starting to come into it's own at the end.

Deadwood.
I saved the last episode for 3 months before watching it. I really didn't want it to end.

Carnivale.
It was a little slow going at times but I was always extremely interested and it really wrapped me up in the mythology they created.

So many others...