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7 TV Shows That Were Cancelled Too Soon

You guys, I’m still really bummed about Enlightened getting cancelled. The more I think about it and rewatch it, the more I think it was one of the best shows produced on television in the past couple of years. But I also understand that this sort of show can only survive so long when next to nobody watches it. Unless someone like Netflix decides to pick it up—and this is 2013 after all, so surely somebody has to step in to keep a show like this from disappearing, right?—it will likely recede into that special little place in the cultural ethos reserved for cancelled TV shows that had their life support plugs pulled regrettably soon.

4) Tell Me You Love Me

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2007 seems like forever ago. That was the year Tell Me You Love Me aired on HBO, and even by today’s standards it would have been pretty daring in its depictions of sex. Its premise was fairly straightforward, even somewhat overused: the show told the stories of three separate but sort of linked couples who all see the same relationship therapist, whose life and relationship is also explored a little bit.

Much of the attention paid to the series centered on its depiction of sex, but in the most literal sense. There were rumors that the sex was unsimulated, which was of course in all likelihood untrue. What was far more interesting about the show was the realism with which it presented sex in relationships, not just graphically but emotionally, physically, and tonally. I don’t know of another show or movie that has captured the role of sex in a romantic relationship quite in this way before or since. Though only having one season to do it, the show had some smart and important things to say, and was gathering momentum when its creator Cynthia Mort and HBO decided together that the agreed upon second season would not go forward.