There are some TV shows that seem to go on forever. Series like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Doctor Who have all been running for decades. Far more often, TV shows will run for a few seasons and then retire themselves. And there are some shows that only get to go once around the track.
But that shouldn’t imply they aren’t worth watching. In fact, there are lots of great series out there that only lasted for one season. In this article, we’re going to try and avoid miniseries or other shows that were designed to be one-and-done affairs. We’ll also steer clear of shows that ended their single seasons on massive cliffhangers. These are great shows that only lasted for one year, and that was enough.
Watchmen (2019)
Superheroes, HBO style
The superhero movie phenomenon was in full swing in 2019, with mega-hit films like Avengers: Endgame in cinemas and The Boys just starting up on Prime Video. HBO contributed to the movement with Watchmen, a TV series that followed up on Alan Moore’s legendary comic book.
Watchmen is set in a world where superheroes are real, but not overly fantastical. Regina King is Angela Abar, a Tulsa police detective who moonlights as a vigilante called Sister Night. Tim Blake Nelson is Wade Tillman, another Tulsa detective who sometimes wears a reflective mask and goes by Looking Glass. The superheroes on Watchmen are weird, violent, and not quite right in the head.
And then there’s Doctor Manhattan, a being of pure energy who can make and unmake anything with his mind. The story goes to some strange and unexpected places. It seems to end with the promise of more, but more never came. Even without a follow-up, Watchmen is a terrific one-shot series that will take you back to the golden age of the superhero genre.
- Release Date
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2019 – 2019-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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David Semel, Fred Toye
- Writers
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Nick Cuse, Carly Wray
Lovecraft Country (2020)
Get scared. Get moved. Learn something.
Based on the book by Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country is a bold horror series that remixes classic horror tropes with America’s history of race relations. Some of the episodes tell discrete stories, and some advance a larger narrative. In one episode, Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) uses an inheritance to buy a house in a white neighborhood, and has to deal with both angry neighbors and malevolent ghosts. In another, her sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) takes a potion that turns her into a white woman, with bizarre and horrifying consequences. The show is scary, funny, tense, and even moving.
At one point, HBO was planning a second season of Lovecraft Country, but decided against it. That was the right call. Any follow-up would have made the wild first season feel less special.
- Release Date
-
2020 – 2020-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Misha Green
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Courtney B. Vance
George Freeman
-
Jurnee Smollett
Letitia ‘Leti’ Lewis
-
-
Jonathan Majors
Atticus Freeman
Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000)
Welcome to the star factory
Set in a suburban high school in the early 1980s, Freaks and Geeks is a legendary dramedy about the highs and lows of adolescence. Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and her younger brother John (John Francis Daley) join different friend groups at school. That premise is solid enough to carry the show through 18 funny, heartbreaking, fantastic episodes.
Freaks and Geeks is also notable for how many careers it started. The show gave actors like Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segal, and Busy Philipps their breakout roles. Creator Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow also went on to do big things.
- Release Date
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1999 – 2000-00-00
- Network
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NBC
- Showrunner
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Paul Feig
- Directors
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Paul Feig, Judd Apatow
- Writers
-
Paul Feig
The Get Down (2016-2017)
We’ll always have the music
The Get Down is a very ambitious period drama about the hip-hop and disco music scenes in the 1970s. Set in the Bronx, it follows characters like aspiring rapper Zeke Figuero (Justice Smith) and his love interest Mylene (Herizen F. Guardiola), who’s trying to get her career as a disco singer off the ground. The show is full of great music, colorful visuals, danger, love, passion, and heartbreak.
The Get Down employed actual rap legends like Nas and Grandmaster Flash as consultants, ensuring that the period was depicted as accurately as possible. Each episode is even intercut with real footage and newscasts from the 1970s. The Get Down has a wonderful sense of time and place.
The Get Down ends with some character arcs left open, but there aren’t any cliffhangers. It should have lasted longer, but we’re still lucky it exists.
- Release Date
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2016 – 2017-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Baz Luhrmann
- Writers
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Stephen Adly Guirgis, Baz Luhrmann
Almost Human (2013-2014)
More relevant every day
Almost Human ran for one season on Fox before getting canceled, but has since gone on to become a cult classic. The show is set in 2048, when the unrestrained advance of science and technology has caused crime rates to spike a terrifying 400%. The ever-dependable Karl Urban plays John Kennex, a detective who is very unhappy about being partnered up with a synthetic, robotic officer named DRN-0167, although he goes by Dorian (Michael Ealy). John has good reason to distrust these kinds of machines, but over the course of the season, Dorian starts to win him over.
Almost Human puts an interesting twist on the buddy cop formula, and it’s great fun watching Urban and Ealy bounce off each other. The show is set in an immersive dystopian world that recalls Blade Runner or Neuromancer, and because Almost Human has a case-of-the-week police procedural structure, there’s no big cliffhanger at the end of the first season. We get 13 terrific episodes, and then it’s over.
It would have been nice to see more of Almost Human, especially now that AI assistants are a fact of life, but what we got is still perfect the way it is.
- Release Date
-
2013 – 2014-00-00
- Showrunner
-
J.H. Wyman
- Directors
-
Joe Begos
Firefly
The little sci-fi show that could
Firefly is the second sci-fi show on this list that Fox canceled after one season. Like Almost Human, Firefly became a cult classic, and may even be coming back in the near future.
The show follows a lovable crew of mercenaries who travel the solar system in their beat-up spaceship, taking jobs where they can and staying one step ahead of the hegemonic Alliance. The episodes are just as entertaining today as when they first aired. Firely doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, although there are clearly other stories the writers wanted to get to.
And they did get to at least one: a 2005 movie called Serenity followed up on many of the events of the show and gave it a proper send-off. It’s almost cheating to put Firefly on this list, but we couldn’t omit such a famous one-season wonder.
- Release Date
-
2002 – 2003-00-00
- Network
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FOX
- Showrunner
-
Joss Whedon
- Directors
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Allan Kroeker, David Solomon, James A. Contner, Marita Grabiak, Michael Grossman, Tim Minear, Vern Gillum
- Writers
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Cheryl Cain, Drew Z. Greenberg, Jane Espenson
-
Nathan Fillion
Mal Reynolds
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Gina Torres
Zoë Washburne
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Alan Tudyk
Hoban Washburne
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Morena Baccarin
Inara Serra
Other one-and-done treats
There are also lots of great series out there that were designed from the beginning to only last one season, miniseries like The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, Band of Brothers on HBO, and more. They’re not exactly like the shows on this list, but they’ll entertain you just the same.