Why was Cybill canceled?

[TMC]

How come the '90s CBS sitcom "Cybill" with Cybill Shepherd and Christine Baranski had such a short run?

Question: How come the '90s CBS sitcom "Cybill" with Cybill Shepherd and Christine Baranski had such a short run?

Because if we are all going to be honest while Cybill Shepherd has always been a darling of the critics, most people find her to be cold and off-putting as a performer. It’s why her film career never went anywhere and why despite decades in the business, other than her pairing with Bruce Willis on Moonlighting, she’s never become a major performer.

If you watch Cybill, other characters are funny while Cybill herself is the straight man. That means that if you’re watching it, you find yourself waiting until someone cracks a joke rather than Shepherd’s setup/build up to that joke. That’s great when you have an exceptional cast. However Cybill had Christine Baranski and Alan Rosenberg ahead of everyone else when it needed funnier performers or even a minority to make it appear to be less bland and less “monochromatic”. It’s basically Murphy Brown with fewer laughs which itself seems to have been a difficult task.

Frankly if they hadn’t invested so much money, if the Carsey/Werner production company didn’t have so much clout with the network, and had critics been harsher, the series probably would have been gone in its freshman or sophomore seasons. It was a tired (and tiring program). Shepherd really wasn’t an attraction, and frankly the stories weren’t particularly memorable. By the third season, it wasn’t holding its ratings spot and the decision was made to pull the plug. The fact remains that it was a middling series and that no one wants to watch Cybill Shepherd on anything other than television episodes of programs where she’s not the star.

If you doubt me, here’s a sample: