Shows abandoned before broadcast

Indeed, though in case anyone was wondering, they did show all the episodes of the Antiques Inspectors, but six months later, they'd filmed the whole series. That series must have been cursed because the first series, which Carol Vorderman presented, was due to start on the day Diana died.

There's a famous story about Jackie Gleason, the big American comedian, doing a quiz in the fifties called You're In The Picture which had such a crappy format the first episode was a disaster because nobody got any of the answers right, and in show two Gleason didn't play the game but just spent the whole show talking about how bad it had been and telling jokes, then eventually it just mutated into a comedy chat show and carried on for months. Although the sponsor pulled out because it was no longer what they'd paid for.

Of course.

In 'the good old days', people would be interviewed, selected, told about what to do and not to do etc., but would ultimately be left to be themselves on the production. Sometimes editing would minimise their personalities, but more often than not they were just played out (see Holness-era Blockbusters, Bullseye, Crystal Maze).

Nowadays the thing is for contestants to have an elongated sob-story which clearly over-emphasises the importance of winning, then during the production have the contestant constantly talk about 'how much £10,000 [cash] would mean' and ask their friends and family banal questions (in exchange for banal answers). It's not how a normal human being would act. The reason they do it is because they are informed, in no uncertain terms that they are informed that if they don't behave in exactly the way the production team desire, it wont be broadcast and they wont receive a prize.

It came up not so long ago about a time in early Bullseye when none of the contestants took 'the gamble'. Back in the 80s, they were happy to play a lengthy "what you could have won" VT to fill time, but now I think it's more likely a producer would just walk on to the set and threaten to bin the whole episode unless one of them relented.

It's something which has crept in over the last 5 years (1 vs 100 is one of the first productions where it's noticeable how media savvy all the contestants seem), and as I said the worst example is The Colour of Money.
Series like this tend to be ordered such that something notable happens in the last episode - possibly a large amount of money was won. If the episode went out, that prize would have to be paid, so the difference between playing out that last episode to no audience and playing out some old filler to no audience could have been over £100,000 [cash].

The argument was put forward in the case of the Ingrams and WWTBAM that the whole situation could have been avoided if Celador/ITV simply binned the episode.

Wikipedia has an interesting list of programmes axed after one episode it mentions a couple of programmes that were pulled during their first episode:

ABC's Turn On in 1969. Some TV stations who were showing it didn't return after the first ad break and those in other time zones didn't show it at all

Channel 7's Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos was pulled after the network's owner Kerry Packer phoned up the control room and ordered it to be taken off the air

Speaking of Brian Conley, there are also the remaining episodes of Judgement Day that never went out.

Are you sure about that? Surely the prize is paid out when the contestant wins it, not when it's shown on air?

Positive. From the Millionaire contestant contract, used as evidence in the Ingram's trial:

They love their legalaties dont they?

Has anyone sued a production company/broadcaster over a non broadcast & got anywhere?

Well, it was always said that ATV lost a load of money after deciding not to broadcast the earliest episodes of Bullseye because they were so bad, as a car was won in one of them and they had to pay for it.

A surprising number of those shows on Wikipedia are British formats, of course, including The Rich List which is now Who Dares Wins, and the American adaptation of Blackpool. The Spike Milligan series The Melting Pot, mentioned there, was shown as part of a series of pilots but seemingly the entire series had been filmed, so maybe they were unsure about it after they made it and flung out the first as a pilot to gauge audience reaction.

Last year E4 cancelled Dirty Digest, a topical comedy show, after two episodes because the production company changed all the writers without telling them and E4 decided it wasn't the programme they commissioned so axed it. And there was a docusoap on BBC2 in 1998 about a village in Cumbria that only got one episode out before they found out the producer owned the pub that featured prominently and it was a massive conflict of interest, though it was later re-edited and Tyne Tees showed it.

As for the original premise of the thread, a la Home, when Steve Coogan was in his pomp they announced they were going to do a sitcom based around Gareth Cheeseman, his arsehole computer salesman off Coogan's Run, but they never did. Presumbaly Coogan was too busy, or they never got the scripts together, or couldn't work out how it'd be different enough from Alan Partridge.

Well given that he missed out on the opportunity to host BGT, which I believe continues to be ITV's highest rating entertainment show, as Mandy Rice-Davies once said "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

That was Here Comes The Queen which also starred Les Dennis. The pilot was filmed but never broadcast and plans for the series were dropped following Richards' death in early-2009.

At the height of Dad's Army's popularity there were plans for Arthur Lowe and James Beck to re-record some of the Tony Hancock scripts for radio. After Beck's sudden illness and subsequent death in 1973, Lowe decided not to go ahead with the venture using another actor, as he felt that Beck was irreplaceable.

Although not an entire series that was abandoned, Hardwick House, from 1988 (I think), by Central, only got two episodes shown, before being pulled, due to it being unsuitable for a prime time pre watershed slot. It's claimed, but never proved, that Central did show the remaining episodes in a late night slot unbilled. And ITV refuse to say if the episodes still survive on tape. So, until evidence comes up, these have never been broadcast.

There were about two if not three episodes of The Sketch Show that ITV never broadcast in 2003, they did end up going on Paramount Comedy after so long IIRC. This was that era when ITV were pulling shows left right and centre if they bombed pretty quickly.

From what I remember the BBC had a phase of doing this too, and I recall Greg Dyke commenting that it was easier filling a slot with an Only Fools and Horses repeat as it would bring in the viewers.