<p>We may not know it yet, but we are perhaps in the golden age of OTT content. </p>.<p>Social media takes an active interest in the production of these shows, trying to keep the good shows floating and letting the poor ones sink. </p>.<p>The real losers are the great shows of the pre-internet age whose existence was subject to the whims of studios of the time.</p>.<p><em>Metrolife</em> looks back at four shows of a bygone era, which were cancelled because they did not get the online love they deserved.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Freaks and geeks</span></strong></p>.<p>If you were to zap someone from the 90s to 2020, they would be surprised that a feminist, meta-narrative farce like ‘Fleabag’ is so successful. That’s because the hits of the 90s were shows with wafer-thin plots like ‘Friends’, where the height of the comedy is the extra stress on a basic verb. (Could you BE any more gullible?)</p>.<p>‘Freaks and Geeks’ relished in the realism and nuance that OTT platforms would pay big money for today. The show tells the story of a bunch of school kids as they deal with life, and how they pick themselves up.</p>.<p>The show also launched the careers of many of Hollywood leading artistes today, including Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Jason Segel and Seth Rogan.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron</span></strong></p>.<p>If you are a 90s kid, the movie ‘Cats’ that released recently was a disaster not just because it was a bad movie. It’s because you have seen anthropomorphic cats done right.</p>.<p>‘Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron’ was one of the best shows to grace the television screens in the 90s. It was a futuristic fantasy about two pilot-turned-mechanics who moonlight as saviours of their city.</p>.<p>Violence in cartoons was a touchy subject in the 90s. The showrunner Ted Turner testified before the US House of Congress that they do not produce violent cartoons, which led to the show’s eventual cancellation.</p>.<p>Curiously, the violence in ‘Swats Kats’ was tame by modern standards. And though the violence in cartoons debate is untraceable today, ‘Swat Kats’ remains brilliant.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Futurama</span></strong></p>.<p>Now, this is not necessarily a hastily concluded show because it ran for seven seasons. However, the premature end of ‘Futurama’ is today considered a loss to television. The show told the story of a pizza delivery guy who accidentally gets frozen for 1,000 year, and then wakes up in the future.</p>.<p>The show went through a series of cancellations. Apparently, the people at Fox, where the show originally ran, were not its fans, and they wouldn’t give ‘Futurama’ a consistent day of the week for it to air.</p>.<p>Then Comedy Central picked the show up for a bit, before cancelling it again.</p>.<p>The legacy of the show was its intelligent humour. Not one to shy away from complexity, ‘Futurama’ even joked with mathematical complex theories, while engaging in low-brow cracks when necessary. </p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Pinky and the Brain</span></strong></p>.<p>Concluded after four seasons, the show aired on Cartoon Network in India, but was largely aimed at an adult audience. The show made references to a plethora to shows, and even to the contemporary political scene in America, with Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore making an appearance once.</p>.<p>The showrunners then tried to incorporate the ensemble cast format of ‘The Simpsons’, which was very popular at the time. This failed and the show was soon erased from television.</p>
<p>We may not know it yet, but we are perhaps in the golden age of OTT content. </p>.<p>Social media takes an active interest in the production of these shows, trying to keep the good shows floating and letting the poor ones sink. </p>.<p>The real losers are the great shows of the pre-internet age whose existence was subject to the whims of studios of the time.</p>.<p><em>Metrolife</em> looks back at four shows of a bygone era, which were cancelled because they did not get the online love they deserved.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Freaks and geeks</span></strong></p>.<p>If you were to zap someone from the 90s to 2020, they would be surprised that a feminist, meta-narrative farce like ‘Fleabag’ is so successful. That’s because the hits of the 90s were shows with wafer-thin plots like ‘Friends’, where the height of the comedy is the extra stress on a basic verb. (Could you BE any more gullible?)</p>.<p>‘Freaks and Geeks’ relished in the realism and nuance that OTT platforms would pay big money for today. The show tells the story of a bunch of school kids as they deal with life, and how they pick themselves up.</p>.<p>The show also launched the careers of many of Hollywood leading artistes today, including Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Jason Segel and Seth Rogan.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron</span></strong></p>.<p>If you are a 90s kid, the movie ‘Cats’ that released recently was a disaster not just because it was a bad movie. It’s because you have seen anthropomorphic cats done right.</p>.<p>‘Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron’ was one of the best shows to grace the television screens in the 90s. It was a futuristic fantasy about two pilot-turned-mechanics who moonlight as saviours of their city.</p>.<p>Violence in cartoons was a touchy subject in the 90s. The showrunner Ted Turner testified before the US House of Congress that they do not produce violent cartoons, which led to the show’s eventual cancellation.</p>.<p>Curiously, the violence in ‘Swats Kats’ was tame by modern standards. And though the violence in cartoons debate is untraceable today, ‘Swat Kats’ remains brilliant.</p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Futurama</span></strong></p>.<p>Now, this is not necessarily a hastily concluded show because it ran for seven seasons. However, the premature end of ‘Futurama’ is today considered a loss to television. The show told the story of a pizza delivery guy who accidentally gets frozen for 1,000 year, and then wakes up in the future.</p>.<p>The show went through a series of cancellations. Apparently, the people at Fox, where the show originally ran, were not its fans, and they wouldn’t give ‘Futurama’ a consistent day of the week for it to air.</p>.<p>Then Comedy Central picked the show up for a bit, before cancelling it again.</p>.<p>The legacy of the show was its intelligent humour. Not one to shy away from complexity, ‘Futurama’ even joked with mathematical complex theories, while engaging in low-brow cracks when necessary. </p>.<p><strong><span class="bold">Pinky and the Brain</span></strong></p>.<p>Concluded after four seasons, the show aired on Cartoon Network in India, but was largely aimed at an adult audience. The show made references to a plethora to shows, and even to the contemporary political scene in America, with Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore making an appearance once.</p>.<p>The showrunners then tried to incorporate the ensemble cast format of ‘The Simpsons’, which was very popular at the time. This failed and the show was soon erased from television.</p>
