The Best TV Series You've Never Watched

Ever heard of a TV series from the late 1950's called Johnny Staccato? How About The Jake Effect, a sitcom starring Jason Bateman (Arrested Development)? How About EZ Streets?

No? Don't feel bad, not many of us did.

These series got cancelled before they had the chance to catch an audience.

Yes, a lot of shows get cancelled due to low ratings- and part of the reason for low ratings: shitty, shitty, shitty.

But some- like the three I've just mentioned- were nothing short of spectacular. Johnny Staccato, for example, was a half hour private detective series that was filmed in film noir style (film noir meaning "night film"). it had all the right ingredients: a lonely guy who gets in over his head- in this case Johnny Staccato, played by the late actor and director John Cassavettes (his widow is actress Gena Rowlands) who is a jazz pianist who moonlights as a private eye. The dame, or often times, femme fatale- in this case played by the late Bewitched actress Elizabeth Montgomery (damn, she exuded such white hot sexuality, which this series had, leaving the imagination to us viewers. Hey, it was 1959. they didn't show bare butts like they did on NYPD Blue). And a bad guy- hey, you gotta have a bad guy, or else it wouldn't be a detective/crime drama series. And, often times, you gotta have the MacGuffin- a device that they bad guy wants (of course, the great British director Alfred Hitchcock invented the term).

The series got canned before it had its' chance to catch on to viewers. Perhaps it was ahead of its' time, just like Star Trek was in the late 1960s. Or perhaps viewers didn't understand the noir style. But from watching it- and tapping to that white hot sexy cool score by elmer Berstein- I think that Johnny Staccato would have made it had NBC kept it on a bit longer.

Then, there's EZ Streets, which is a mafia versus cops series that aired about 10 years ago. It starred Ken Olin as a police detective tracking activities of a mobster, played by the always stellar Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos, the lesbian noir thriller Bound). This series, Pantoliano makes a deal with a female mob associate to keep his bar. In the meantime, another mob associate, named Dog Face, is missing (and we know what that usually means).

There is a website that pays tribute to these cancelled-before-their-time series. Brilliant But Cancelled (just click on the title to go directly to the link). All of them were produced by Universal Studios- the site is owned by NBC Universal (wanna call it bias?) and aired on various TV networks.

So watch, and enjoy.