What are some examples of series with a good premise, but a bad execution?

Dead Like Me

Honestly, I liked the characters mostly and I personally liked the casting. The writing had some few good parts every now and then—and I like how they tried to cover a strange concept where the dead get by with living life meanwhile the living get by with death.

It sounds good on paper, and while I got a good laugh from the show, I can see why it suffered when it came to the plot. I think with what they tried to go with, there was very little they could keep going for seasons on end. I'm actually surprised it made it as far as it did.

The whole thing really could have just been a movie that people went to watch and would have left a better impression. Nonetheless, the main character person is like a role model to me. I wish I could be a badass like her.

as in ‘her big brown eyes’?
Holy shit, I can't believe this is the first comment I see and that you commented the first thing that came to my mind.
That series has stuck with me for years and I wholeheartedly agree with you. It has some amazing first episodes but the series dragged on for way too long.
- 🤝

Altered Carbon.

Oofie, what a mess that was.

I loved the first season. The second season was unwatchable. What a disappointment
Loved first season.
Not sure what's up with the second season.
NB. I'm not comparing to the books here, at all.
- Horrfic miscast with Anthony Mackie

The acolyte. Love the premise and the setup, but that went down there drain sog hard.

The Expanse.

Here's my main problem with it: Holden. The most boring white guy in the universe, and he's inexplicably the main character.

And I never read it, but apparently the book version was even worse for this.

Holden wasn’t the problem with the expanse. What you got of him in the show is pretty much who he was in the books.
The problem the Expanse had is the first half of season one is a chore to watch, it gets much better in the second half. Seasons two and three are great, unfortunately season four and five sucked ass and season six was just too little too late.
I don't see that. I am not saying he's the most amazing character ever, but he's fine.

"Heroes" is a strong example of this during the writers strike.

While the writer's strike had obvious effects on season 3 (RIP MIA Irish girl), it's not like season 2 was outstanding television either.
They really just had one good season worth of ideas.
- The first season was great but I expected a better arc from them. It felt like one of those shows that replays 15 minutes of footage for 45 minutes.
  I wanted them to explore the world more, to give a deeper plot, to see more action and nuance to their abilities, but I remember it felt like I was promised a lake but got a pond.
  Also, I was able to predict the entire ending before it aired. So that was a bit of a bummer.
THE SHOWRUNNER, originally wanted different heros for each seasons, and thats probably one of its many faults, they listened to much to fans, and gave fan service,.
- Oh, wow. That explains so much. Every season of Heroes after the first feels like every character had a traumatic personality altering head injury.
  The later seasons of the show would have made much more sense if they had changed actors each season.

The Starlost needs a remake. Great premise, dollar store execution.

Foreseeing the destruction of Earth, humanity builds a multi-generational starship called Earthship Ark, 50 miles (80 km) wide and 200 miles (320 km) long. The ship contains dozens of biospheres, each kilometres across and housing people of different cultures. Their goal is to find and seed a new world of a distant star.

In 2385, more than 100 years into the voyage, an unexplained accident occurs, and the ship goes into emergency mode in which each biosphere is sealed off from the others.

Centuries after its original launch, most of the descendants of the original crew and colonists are unaware that they are even aboard a spaceship.

Man that sounds awesome.

SGU, good premise, but it was poorly executed as a soap drama, shouldve been aliens/tech,,,,etc first.

I loved SGU. 🤷‍♂️
I think each one of the Stargate shows was aimed at a different audience. I enjoyed Atlantis, and SGU was my jam. SG-1 I could never get into. And that’s fine — more variety means wider appeal.
- SGU unfortunately went too-bsg drama on the 1st season, which caused thier DECLINE. plus MGM was having all sorts financial problems too. season 2 was definitely way better.
  Also i did some digging around, and according to the writers/showrunners season 3 was going to have more stuff that was foreshadowed, like planetbuilders lore, the creators of the drones, i believed one of them made an AMA on stargate sub, said the drones were likely created by one of the novus colony humans centuries ago.
  it was kind obvious, they were building up the planetbuilders to something later on.
Everything had to be grimdark heartburn drama because Battlestar Galactica. Outright killed my interest in television.
- even BSG had bad execution, mainly the showrunners messianic vision for the show(aka like supernatural, had "angels" guiding specific individuals, sound familiar). should stuck with the OG bsg source material.

Want the list sorted alphabetically or what..?

One of the worst shows I know is the German adaptation of The IT Crowd. I thought I'd get some new nerd content to watch but boy was that bad. They mostly translated the dialogue word by word, so some jokes don't make any sense. And they replaced the eccentric style with weird and bad acting. Watching it made me cringe.

And I didn't enjoy Prison Break. I liked the idea and the premise and getting to know the characters... But then I lost interest later during the first season. Felt more like a chore to watch and the only thing I wanted to see is how they finally escape... I believe they did several more seasons of the show. Idk if other people enjoyed it, but I think they could have delivered more with the premise of the story.

Same kind of thing happened with That 70s Show. There was a British remake which used the same scripts, and it was awful. Really terrible.
It‘s the cast that made the original work. Just a shame that almost all of them turned out to be huge pieces of shit
- I don't think that show made it to where I live...
  Yes, people being pieces of shit is kind of a bummer. Speaking of The IT Crowd... Graham Linehan (the writer) also subsequently turned from comedy writer to anti-transgender activist. And his work shifted from award winning comedy to hateful online posts, fighting legal issues and writing his memoirs on how that cost him his career... I don't get it, and it's just unfortunate.
German adaptation of The IT Crowd. I thought I'd get some new nerd content to watch but boy was that bad. They mostly translated the dialogue word by word
They did the same for the US pilot as well, absolutely terrible. Hell Moss is played by Moss, it's so weird.
- Oof. I completely forgot about that one. I mean I generally don't get why things get replicated scene by scene... I don't see any benefit in that. And then the cast is utterly unable to pull it off, except Richard Ayoade, who seems to got paid to repeat his acting pretty much exactly. Other than that the pacing is off all the time so the jokes don't work either. And didn't they know British humour and American one are different? I mean it's pretty much the same language, but it should be pretty obvious you can't just repeat it with an American accent and hope that's going to achieve anything... It's just very weird. Both the execution and the entire idea this would work.
To be fair, absolutely nobody thought Das iTeam was good which is of course why it was cancelled after two episodes.
- Hehe. Seems the program directors at Sat1 felt the "Fremdscham" as well... They did the entire first season, though. Now that you mentioned it, seems they moved it to Sat.1 Comedy after 2 episodes and aired the remaining 4 episodes there.
  I still think the premise is somewhat alright. The concept of doing adaptations has worked out well for shows like The Office or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's just that people need to put in effort to do an adaptation... And Germans can do nerdy comedy, these days we have IT-Praxis Dr. Bauer, and that's both an original idea(?) and hilarious.
Prison Break was supposed to be only 1 season of 13 episodes if I remember correctly. They expanded the season and then even made two more seasons. It’s a case of “know when to leave”. I bet the 13 episode season would have rocked. I enjoyed season 1 but the rest was total garbage.

Leviathan on Netflix. Love the idea of tech culture vs monster culture, but the main chars were so grating, and had the philosophical reasoning of a 8 year old.

Such a waste of a premise.

Journeyman.

Guy randomly wakes up in the past, does things that change the future, has to go back and fix it again. So much potential but didn't last more than a season.

And don't forget about Drive. It launched Emma Stone's career but was canceled before the first season was even over.

A lot of anime, actually. Japan green lights anything, and some of it actually works. Most anime has stupid ideas that, if you give them a chance, actually works. Like “what if we take X-Men and the idea that 80% of people are normal and 20% have power and flip the script?” My Hero Academia. The fan base has turned toxic but the show is still great. Or “what if alchemy actually worked?” Neither Fullmetal Alchemist adaptation is very good because of how they adapted the books — the first one did the first half then went their own way because they caught up, the second one sped through the first half then dragged out the second half — but it’s still considered top tier anime. Not all of them hit though. Like “what if guns were smart and decided if they’d kill when you pull the trigger?” Or “what if a portal opened over the middle of the ocean to fairy land and cops had to pair up with faeries for reasons we’ll get around to explaining when we feel like it.” Psycho-Pass and Cop Craft, respectively.

I was thinking Sword Art Online, great opportunity to deal with what makes life meaningful or show a bunch of cool boss battles. Instead we got massive exposition drops, rape and incest.
- Not to mention it was a ripoff of .hack//SIGN. Still enjoyed it though.
alot of animes from japan, in my opinion are too short, only last 2 season at most. they definitely couldve gone to 5-7 season at maximum. AOT was probably the worstly executed, waited too long to finish the series.
- I would argue the opposite. Good anime has 2 or 3 seasons. If it takes more you hit this dbz, Gundam, or One Piece never ending filler trainwreck.
  Tell the story. Don't wear it out. Even if it is a little bit forced or contrived, at least it has a tolerable ending and direction to get there. There are still flaws, but it is concise enough I can deal with it.
  Cowboy bebop, big O, paranoia agent, Fooley Cooley, death note, basically the whole of the adult swim line up excluding Inuyasha is perfect in showing that you don't need five plus seasons to build an iconic anime series. Are they flawed in their own way, yes. But they are brief enough to maintain their story and relevance and become mainstays.
  Bonus points to blood plus that lasted a bit longer but held itself together the whole way through.
  Hindsight, I may just be a sucker for the early 2000s and 10's cartoon network anime. But damned if it wasn't good.
- Attack on Titan waited too long for Season 2, which was a huge let-down. You had to really believe to watch Season 3 after waiting four years for a short season that was not very good, and then they had the gall to come back again. Of course, season 3 came out swinging, and in retrospect, season 2 wasn't that bad, it just wasn't worth a four year wait.
  The ones that are too short are Tokyo Ghoul and The Promised Neverland. Still waiting for a second season for both of those. (That actually adapts the source material, I mean.)
I think of my hero academia as someone read xanth and said lets do it with superheroes.

I think a lot of these are going to be cases where the first season was great, but the second season didn't make sense or the first season should have wrapped up the story.

I think Designated Survivor is one example of this. The premise is great, what if the majority of government was killed, how do you rebuild? However the show turned into... I really don't know because I stopped watching.

I think another more recent example is Paradise. Although maybe season 2 will prove me wrong.

Designated Survivor was awesome. I didn’t need it to make perfect sense. Kiefer Sutherland was exactly what you expect. It helped launch the careers of McKenna Grace (his daughter, who went on to play in the new Ghostbusters movie, one of which she sang the ending to) and Jamie Clayton (his sister in law, trans woman played by a trans actress; she went on to appear in sense8 and some other stuff). That One Scene in season 2 I’ll never forget. When they cut Kiefer Sutherland’s mic. One of the actor’s best scenes. I loved Designated Survivor… but maybe more for the acting than the plot. Oh yeah, and Michael J. Fox as a character with Parkinson’s. That show never stopped winning. It wasn’t The West Wing but it was never supposed to be.
- helped launch the careers of McKenna Grace
  I first saw her in Handmaid's Tale, and then in Ghostbusters. She was fantastic in both, so I'll agree that if Designated Survivor launched her career then it was worth it.
  Maybe I owe the show another chance but I just remembered losing interest so quickly. I can't remember if it was after or during season one but I just stopped caring what was going on at some point.

Motherland: Fort Salem.

Fantastic premise and rich world that suffered due to lack of budget.

The creator even had featurettes where he just explained things that he wasn't able to show and it was so good.

Hate me but …

Fall out, Stranger things, Most of the Star Wars series (looking at you Andor)

I'm just going to say I think the first and third examples are just not your taste. They're not badly executed. Stranger Things had a great first season, but they really couldn't nail it after that. It's kinda the Alien issue, switching more actiony after the first installment.
what specifically is wrong the the execution of those shows?
- Maybe that’s me that have a real artist-y vision but I find them real blend. Camera work and Montage are real easy, scenario don’t go far (at this point I’ll call it the Disney’s method).
  Most of their Univers are well documented and immense, their’s a lot of ground to work but I find that they prefer to go in way that don’t need them to do a lot of work and produce a series that we already saw but with a new veneer.
cant expect much from disney, when they are pushing out refuse after refuse.
- yeah disney seems to really keep titrating down to the lowest point they can keep viewership with their content.