It’s really frustrating to finish a TV show and realize there aren’t any more seasons or special episodes coming. Sometimes you find it out of nowhere and have no idea whether the story has been renewed yet, or maybe you already know it’s only one season, but after watching it, you wish you had known you were about to have such a great experience, because now it’s already over. Lately, TV has given us more and more shows that leave audiences dealing with exactly this problem, and to this day, there are still people trying to get over the heartbreak of something that ended years ago and never came back. Can you think of one series that made you feel this way? Sometimes it’s a miniseries, and sometimes it was simply canceled too soon, right?
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In this list, you’ll find 5 shows that were really good while they lasted, and somehow, one season just didn’t feel like enough for most people.
5) Sharp Objects
image courtesy of hbo
Continuing Sharp Objects would be one of those cases where a story ends perfectly, and when they keep going, it loses its impact and you end up feeling like they ruined the show. In fact, it has always been seen as a very tight miniseries, so it doesn’t really make sense for it to be on this list anyway. However, its ending does leave the door open. Here, we follow Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), a journalist who returns to her hometown to investigate the murders of two girls and ends up back with her mother, Adora (Patricia Clarkson), her half-sister Amma (Eliza Scanlen), and the life she tried to leave behind. It’s a psychological thriller based on Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, and the murder case is pretty interesting — just not more interesting than Camile.
The biggest strength of the story is watching the protagonist try to make sense of her own past while realizing that her family is much more frightening than it appears. There’s always the tension between her and especially Adora, and it’s one of the biggest reasons you get so intrigued by the story. The entire tone of Sharp Objects is built around that, and because it’s so well written, it makes you realize how hard it is these days to find a series in this genre that is this good and this well put together. The plot wrapped up perfectly, but it left us with an open ending, and director Jean-Marc Vallée and showrunner Marti Noxon said that it was up to the audience to imagine what would happen next. In 2019, there were some conversations with Flynn about a possible continuation, but apparently nothing came of it.
4) Mare of Easttown
image courtesy of hbo
Following pretty much the same concept as Sharp Objects, Mare of Easttown actually stands out for one specific reason: it’s a crime drama that makes you care just as much about the murder being investigated as you do about the people involved in it. The story follows Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet), a detective in a Pennsylvania town who investigates the disappearance and death of a teenage girl while her own life is falling apart. The thing is that the mystery is almost unnecessary when you look at how complex all the characters are. The show puts a protagonist in the middle of family problems, a tragedy that she still hasn’t been able to move past, and a community that knows pretty much every detail of her life. Okay, but so what?
Well, all those people around her are so interesting that they could carry their own show, which is why the twists hit so much harder — you already know the characters and have already formed an opinion about all of them (even the supporting cast is really strong, just to give an idea). Plus, Mare herself is different from so many TV detectives because she isn’t that stereotypical brilliant and traumatized detective who always knows what to do; she’s stubborn, irritated, tired, sometimes terrible at communicating, and very human. So a lot of people were hoping for a new season of Mare of Easttown. Luckily, they’re kind of getting one — just in the form of a pseudo-sequel called Task. The story takes place in the same universe, with Lori Ross (Julianne Nicholson) returning.
3) Normal People
image courtesy of bbc
Some people say the Normal People adaptation is a thousand times better than the book it was based on, so much that it’s a show where you reach the final episode and immediately want so much more thanks to the characters’ dynamic and the message of the story. Here, we meet Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), who start out as two teenagers who couldn’t be more socially different, but develop a relationship that continues to exist even when they break up, grow apart, and enter completely different phases of their lives. And you know what that creates? Connection with the audience, because the complexity feels real, and it doesn’t even rely on big events to keep you invested in everything; a conversation left unresolved or a change in behavior is enough to build tension.
Edgar-Jones and Mescal make a huge difference, because there’s such an easy chemistry between them that it’s very believable the characters keep thinking about each other even when they’re not together. Of course, the show works as a complete story, and it would probably be a mistake to make up conflicts just to produce at least a second season. But that doesn’t mean 12 episodes were enough for people who became so invested. Normal People captures a very specific stage of life because it’s about how one person can totally change the way you see yourself. It’s contradictory because the show’s ending is great for not developing anything further, but at the same time, it’s part of being human to wonder about what comes next in life.
2) The Queen’s Gambit
image courtesy of netflix
The Queen’s Gambit is a very different case that’s hard to explain, since its story is about chess and because co-creator Scott Frank was very much against the possibility of continuing it. In the show, Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an orphan who discovers she has an extraordinary talent for chess and starts climbing the competitive scene. At the same time, though, she begins dealing with childhood trauma, substance abuse, and difficulty when it comes to handling her own life. And naturally, without the story needing to turn every match into a matter of life or death, you root for her because you understand her from a young age thanks to the way her arc is built.
In short, you want more seasons because Beth is such a memorable protagonist that one season feels way too little. And the best part of all is that the series could have been completely niche, but instead, it gets you 100% invested even if you’ve never cared about chess. The balance between competition and drama also never lets the experience get boring — whatever is happening in her life changes the way she plays, and the relationships she has along the way end up being important. The Queen’s Gambit ends well and doesn’t leave anything incomplete, but it’s a rare kind of series, and when so many people love it, you wouldn’t mind seeing it continued in some way (even if it were just through a spin-off).
1) My Lady Jane
image courtesy of prime video
My Lady Janemay not have been on everyone’s radar, and that’s partly because it didn’t even have to get there, since it was canceled and the audience flooded the internet with complaints about it. And it’s one of the hardest cases to understand since it’s creative, bold, and managed to have an audience with only eight episodes. It’s a reimagining of the real story of Lady Jane Grey, who became Queen of England for just nine days. The tone, however, is anything but conventional; the series throws everything out the window to create a version where Jane (Emily Bader) is a woman determined to control her own destiny in a fantasy plot filled with power struggles, romance, adventure, conspiracies, and even comedy. Historical dramas have always been a very traditional genre, and here the idea was to change that.
The show could have turned into a complete mess because of that, but that’s not what happens; it’s surprisingly fun and lighthearted. Also, the Jane and Guildford (Edward Bluemel) romance is one of the main reasons you get attached to the universe, as it gives the entire story a very strong emotional core. And to top it all off, maybe the biggest strength of My Lady Jane is the fact that it shows you can be funny while still taking the characters seriously: the narration breaks the fourth wall, there are absurd jokes, the soundtrack is modern, and all the figures speak and behave in ways that don’t match the 16th century — yet the show never turns everything in a parody. There were already ideas for more seasons, but unfortunately, the cancellation brought all of that crashing down.
7 Shows That Should’ve Stopped After One Season (But Didn’t)
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