ALCATRAZ (2012)
FOX’s mid-season show debuted with one majorly high concept: that 300 Alcatraz inmates and staff who disappeared in 1963 are now showing up unaged in modern-day San Francisco. Maybe it was too soon after Prison Break ending, and maybe audiences just weren’t ready for another possible J.J. Abrams multiverse-in-a-show dealie, but this sci-fi prison show didn’t light TV audience imaginations in 2012. By the end of its 13-episode run, emergences were no longer just confined to the Bay Area city and the main character was killed off to audience shrugs; the migration to cable TV was already well under way at this point.