Where once cancellation meant the end for a TV series, now streaming services are ensuring a second life for all shows great or small. But some things should be left to rest in peace

One of the best things about the current television climate is that shows don’t really die any more. They are cancelled, yes, but only for a matter of hours. Just when you have dug out your best mourning gown, bam; a competitor has bought the rights and dragged it back to life as if nothing had happened. Fox cancelled Brooklyn Nine-Nine, so NBC revived Brooklyn Nine-Nine. SyFy cancelled The Expanse, so Amazon revived The Expanse. Not even Lucifer can die a proper death; when Fox recently binned it, Netflix immediately stepped up to offer it a home.

Lucifer, for crying out loud. You could make a list of your hundred best television programmes – your thousand best, even – and Lucifer would be nowhere to be seen. It barely even counts as television. It’s TV for sick days, for drifting in and out of sleep to.

But, hey, it’s back on Netflix. And if Netflix didn’t pick it up, Amazon would have picked it up. Or Hulu. Or BT Sport. Or whatever cockamamie streaming content service your microwave company just started in an unnecessary fit of us-too delirium. Because this is how things work now. Shows don’t die any more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sara Gilbert and Roseanne Barr in Roseanne. Photograph: Greg Gayne/AP

It doesn’t matter how spectacularly they are cancelled, either. Take Roseanne. That was one of the most explosive, decisive cancellations in television history, a rare example of television networks choosing basic decency over revenue. It was a loud, clear flag in the ground against racism. And guess what? It’s coming back, just without Roseanne. ABC is reportedly planning to retool the sitcom around Darlene, despite the permanent stink that will for ever surround it.

And if bigotry as overt as Roseanne’s no longer signals the death of a TV show, we’re all in trouble. In fact, it makes me long for the days when a cancellation was a cancellation. When a decision was made before the writers had a chance to wrap things up properly. When actors had to try to find a new job. When fans would huddle together and imagine what could have been if the plug hadn’t been pulled.

Hannibal is a prime case in point. You could argue that its cancellation was justified – it was already on the wane in its final stretch of episodes, with Will Graham’s ‘this is my design’ catchphrase in danger of becoming genuinely intolerable – but its early death elevated the series to a brand new rarefied level. Had it been left alone to peter out of its own accord, nobody would have remembered it as fondly. Instead, it stands alone, offed in its prime, almost untouchable in its vision.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, W Earl Brown and Sean Bridgers in Deadwood. Photograph: c.HBO/Everett / Rex Features

Same goes for Deadwood. And Pushing Daisies. And any other number of shows cut short by unscrupulous network bosses. People love those shows, just as they would probably love Dexter if it had been cancelled after season four, or 24 or Homeland if they had been cancelled after season one. Instead, they were allowed to lumber on until viewers grew to hate them for it.

Obviously, it’s worth pointing out that this is by no means a watertight theory – judged on this basis alone, it would mean The Get Down was better than Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is easily the worst take of all time – but it’s a theory that I’ll still stand behind. Sometimes it’s better to just let shows die. We’d all love Arrested Development more if Netflix didn’t save it. We’d much prefer Gilmore Girls without having to consider A Year in the Life. And it goes without saying that everyone would be much happier if Lucifer was left in the dirt. God, I can’t stand that show.