Why do brilliant television horror shows like ‘Penny Dreadful’ and ‘Hannibal‘ keep getting cancelled?

Okay, so before I start I’m well aware that American Horror Story and Walking Dead are still going strong, but I consider those two shows to be entirely different things to the nuanced gothic horror of Penny Dreadful and the morbidly stunning Hannibal

And sure whilst Walking Dead and American Horror Story are good, both have had their less than stellar moments whereas Penny Dreadful and Hannibal both had me questioning whether or not Game of Thrones really was the best thing since sliced bread with both shows being continuously excellent television for their three seasons.

However neither of them will be getting a fourth season as both shows have now been officially cancelled despite rave reviews, loyal fan-bases and stellar work from the actors, writers and directors. But why are these shows stopping if they were so good? let’s take a look.

Hannibal was picked up by NBC a network that doesn’t usually pick shows that are ‘different’ or in other words, contain strangely beautiful murder tableaus, or cannibal induced psycological dream sequences but nevertheless they did. This was such an out of the blue move that every episode people were declaring that NBC would be cancelling it soon. And alas they did after the third season.

That wasn’t the only issue dogging Hannibal throughout it’s progression as a series. The first three seasons displayed what happened before Hannibal was a known serial killer/cannibal but with each season we were moving towards the events of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ which Bryan Fuller and co didn’t have the television rights to. So it was inevitable as well that the excellent show would simply run out of story, or have to start making stuff up.

Ignoring that issue though Fuller was eager to continue making Hannibal and the series would have been picked up by a streaming service, however Amazon owned the streaming rights for the season and didn’t want to invest in a new series and thus ‘Hannibal’ joined the list of other Bryan Fuller television shows like Pushiing Daisies, that are now pushing televisual daisies before their time.

Penny Dreadful on the other hand seems to have played out its natural course with showrunner John Logan revealing that there won’t be a fourth season because the narrative he set out to tell has finished.

However the rumour mill is already spinning and several fans of the show feel that’s simply not true with the show’s third season making efforts to introduce new characters, leaving plot-threats hanging and even allowing it’s big-bad to escape and that Logan is contractually obliged to protect the network, with Showtime discretely cancelling the show.

Regardless of what the truth is, it seems clear that Showtime had a lot of story to tell and could have, although I do see the notion that the series was about Vanessa Ives and so her story coming full circle does mark the end of the show.

The truth is I’m not entirely sure why American Horror Story and Walking Dead have caught on with the general public and continue to get season after season why simply sublime shows that Hannibal and Penny Dreadful slowly disappear, perhaps it’s lack of exposure, perhaps it’s a case of them finishing exactly when they were supposed to, perhaps it’s just that television is a crazy industry and we should just count ourselves lucky we got three excellent seasons of each show!

Anyone know of any really good horror television shows to fill this empty void?