‘Kings’ gets cancelled.

This post is a little late because I was SMASHING HEDS in Warhammer.

So one of the best new TV shows of this season, Kings, is getting pulled from NBC’s Saturday night graveyard before all the season’s episodes have been aired. They’re planning to burn them off over the summer.

I hate when this happens. Favorite new show of the season, great writing, interesting characters, intriguing premise… and nobody watches it. Meanwhile dreck like American Idol and each of seventy-three CSI spinoffs are being watched by absolutely everyone in the country.

I know, I know, it’s pretentious to simply assume that my tastes are “good” and everyone else’s are “bad”. I think there’s more to it with Kings, though. Part of me wonders if NBC ever really did right by the series. Starting it out on Saturday nights and then deciding, well, nobody’s watching it, time to pull it? Who watches TV on Saturday nights? I have no social life to speak of and I don’t even watch TV on Saturday nights.

I’m obviously not an authority on the subject, but why wouldn’t they at least try the show on a weeknight? Try it out on Thursdays in the old ER slot, just for a week or two. See if it works. You know what they’ve got in that slot right now? A show they marketed as “the ER of crime dramas”. Every single other show on TV is a crime drama. Come on, guys! You’re already running two Law & Order series! The other guys have CSI and Bones and NCIS and The Closer and god only knows how many other cop-and/or-lawyer shows I’ve never heard of. That cart is overflowing.

I went through this with NBC a couple years ago when they killed The Black Donnelys. Cancelled before the season was out. For weeks it ranked as NBC’s #2 most downloaded show from their website (second only to Heroes) and the DVD apparently sold like crazy. I know I grabbed my copy. It’s obvious there are eyeballs out there who wanted this show. Why couldn’t NBC deliver it to them?

Maybe the answer is simpler than this: maybe I’m just bitter every time I like a show nobody else does. And maybe Kings isn’t as great a show as I’m suggesting; it’s possible I’ve simply been charmed by actually seeing something unique on TV for once. I’ll just have to content myself with buying the Complete Series DVD when it comes out, and cherishing it for all time.

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