These are the 8 most notorious failures on TV in the last decade

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Sometimes even the most super-hyped blockbuster movies fail, and fail hard. One look at this summer’s Rotten Tomatoes assessments and you’ll find that more than half of the top 20 box office films have been declared “rotten” by critics. "Independence Day: Resurgence" is just the most recent would-be blockbuster that failed to gain traction with critics or general audiences.

But for television, the scale of which only continues to get grander as we trip further into the millennium, high-profile failures are becoming increasingly frequent. As part of #PeakTV, there are more series than ever, and therefore, inevitably more series that fail to make a lasting mark.

Most recently, Showtime’s much talked-about "Roadies," Cameron Crowe’s heralded return to the world of rock music, has been struggling. (You can read Allison Keene’s unimpressed review here.) Even with J.J. Abrams as EP, a strong ad campaign, and a great cast, the series has taken a bath in the ratings, earning only a few hundred thousand viewers during the night of its premiere. Earlier this year, HBO’s "Vinyl" was in a similar situation, stuck in a state of irrelevance that resulted in its eventual cancellation.

Whether or not a series is considered as “failed” is, of course, subjective – but in the case of our list, a “failure” is a series that had high initial critical hopes, large network investment, and/or a reliable star presence that still failed to connect with both critics and audiences.

It’s unclear whether "Roadies" will have its television tour cut short, but ahead of its looming fate, we take a look back at some of TV’s most notorious failures of the past decade (or so), in chronological order:

"Joey" (2004 - 2006)

At home on your aunt’s outdated television set or on a laptop during a middle school sleepover, "Friends" has been a series so unflaggingly ubiquitous that it continues to make for relevant pop culture reference material even two decades after its initial premiere. It makes sense then, that following the series’ final season in 2004, the enterprising minds at NBC would find a way to fill the "Friends"-shaped hole in their schedule with a spin-off of one of their most beloved characters: "Joey." Led by the titular Matt LeBlanc, the series was largely what you might expect: a multicam sitcom devoted to following Tribbiani’s acting career in Los Angeles, and the womanizing antics of the lovable oaf. Though not a disaster upon its first bow ("Friends" fans expectantly followed NBC’s trail of spin-off breadcrumbs), the series continued to lose steam both behind the scenes and with once-faithful audiences. The problem? It’s hard to say for sure – the show managed to last for one and a half seasons before being voted off the island, but my bet is on its rigid refusal to change with the times, as the multi-cam series failed to find footing amongst cutting-edge single camera shows like "The Office" and "30 Rock." (Being scheduled opposite the then-phenomenon "American Idol" also might have had something to do with it.)

"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (2006)

Shortly after Aaron Sorkin took flight from his wildly successful political drama "The West Wing," he set his sights on a very different sort of TV show: a half-hour comedy modeled on his life in the television industry called "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." What resulted was an endlessly buzzy self-parody of the inner-workings of television, with Matthew Perry delivering a top-notch performance so motor-mouthed and self-righteous he could be mistaken for a Sorkin surrogate. With Sorkin penning nearly every episode himself, "Studio 60" followed Perry’s hardly functional yet embarrassingly Christ-like showrunner, a comic mind with the unique ability to effortlessly woo smart-mouthed women while penning a world-changing monologue minutes before air-time. The series, which received initial critical praise and a bevy of Emmy nominations, quickly floundered in the ratings, often trounced by vocal dissenters critical of the arrogantly autobiographical series. Becoming Sorkin’s much-heralded failure, "Studio 60" lacked the ratings or the positive glow of audience praise to stay afloat amongst the sour undertow.

"Viva Laughlin" (2007)

Filmed at what could arguably prove to be the height of Hugh Jackman’s fame, the CBS series "Viva Laughlin" was a doomed Americanization of the British show "Blackpool." The plot — which traced the complicated life of a casino-owning upstart after he finds himself implicated in a murder investigation — was almost irrelevant when compared to the unique musical genre the series occupied. Largely characterized not by its dark comedy but rather its characters’ tendency to break into song and mildly choreographed dance, "Viva Laughlin" premiered two years before "Glee," which ended up proving that scripted musical television could make it in the U.S. mainstream. Failing to replicate the shabby glam and self-deprecation of the British original, though, "Blackpool’s" charming camp was translated into "Laughlin’s" corny cheese, and after two episodes, a swift axing put the series out of its misery.