When it comes to DC television series, there have been plenty for fans to enjoy. Between The CW’s Arrowverse and it’s expansive franchise of interconnected shows including Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl and HBO’s The Penguin and Peacemaker, and even the now-ended Doom Patrol, DC fans have had a lot to choose from and most of them popular or notable enough that we’re still talking about some of them years after they ended their runs — and in some cases, talking about them more than we do some of DC’s movies.
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But while it’s easy to name off several higher profile DC television series, there are others that have come and gone and no one remembers them. These are series that either didn’t quite take off the way some of the others did or somehow flew under the radar to the point that we’ve all but forgotten they existed at all — which is a real shame because some of them (particularly number three on this list) were actually great. Here are five DC tv shows that people have all but forgotten.
5) Naomi
Airing for just one season on The CW, Naomi was created by Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship and based on Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker’s comic book series of the same name. The series followed Naomi McDuffie (played by Kaci Walfall), a comic book loving teen and host of a Superman fan website who sets out to discover the origins of a supernatural event in her hometown of Port Oswego and discovers mysteries about herself in the process.
Naomi went over very well with critics who praised the series for its central mystery, pacing, and particularly Walfall’s performance as Naomi. However, audiences weren’t so taken by the series. It ultimately was also a victim of timing: The CW was sold to Nexstar in 2022 and, ahead of that deal’s finalization, the network cancelled 10 series — including Naomi.
4) Birds of Prey
The WB’s Birds of Prey was a show ahead of its time. Airing for just one season in 2002, the series was very loosely based on the DC Comics Birds of Prey series. Set in a Gotham City that has been abandoned by Batman, the series follows Oracle/Barbara Gordon, Huntress/Helena Kyle, and Black Canary/Dinah Redmond as they take over where Batman left off fighting crime in the city. The series starred Ashley Scott, Dina Meyer, and Rachel Skarsten (who would later go on to star in Batwoman).
The series wasn’t received well by critics, but it did do a lot of interesting things, notably utilized a version of Huntress that is the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. It was also one of The WB’s largest ever premieres — though viewership declined sharply, leading to its cancellation. The series was later made Arrowverse-adjacent thanks to the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event.
3) Krypton
The cancellation of Syfy’s Krypton is still a “this is why we can’t have nice things” sort of moment. Running for two seasons between 2018 and 2019, Krypton was a unique entry in the DC TV landscape in that it follows Superman’s grandfather, Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) and digs into the story of the House of El, which at that time had been ostracized and shamed with Seg seeking to not only redeem his family’s honor, but save his world as well.
Developed by David S. Goyer, Krypton was unlike anything else in the DC television landscape. The series offered up a unique take on not only the history of the House of El, but also that of Krypton as well and incorporated a lot of interesting elements of larger DC lore. The first season of the series took a little time to find its footing, but Season 2 was a critical success and the show seemed really on its way to becoming an all-time great. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled after its second season.
2) Bodies
You may not have ever heard of Bodies, but it was, in fact, a DC television show. Based on the DC Vertigo graphic novel of the same name by Si Spencer, Netflix’s Bodies was a sci-fi thriller miniseries that debuted in 2023 — and both the graphic novel and the series are actually pretty great.
Bodies follows the appearance of a dead body in the Whitechapel area of London but there’s a twist: the same body appears in the same location across four different years: 1980, 1941, 2023, and 2053. It leads to investigations by four different detectives in their own times, with those investigations becoming interconnected and having serious, far-reaching consequences. Twisty and fascinating, the series was always meant to be a one and done so it’s actually a complete series (unlike the rest of the entries on this list) but it’s a genuinely fascinating entry in DC’s overall television catalog.
1) Powerless
NBC’s Powerless might be the most unique of all the DC television offerings on this list. Rather than being about specific comic book characters or based on any specific comic book, Powerless was instead set within the overall world of the DC Universe and follows Emily Locke (Vanessa Hudgens), an employee at the Wayne Enterprises subsidiary Wayne Security that focuses on products to help regular people avoid becoming collateral damage in the battles between superheroes and supervillains. The series also starred Danny Pudi, Christina Kirk, Ron Funches, and Alan Tudyk.
With its story being centered mostly around the normal people in a world of superheroes and chaos associated with them, Powerless was a bit of a breath of fresh air. It was a quirky show that was met with mixed reviews but never found an audience. NBC pulled the final three episodes from the schedule before they could air and officially cancelled the series in May 2017.
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