Having not been attracted to watching Two and Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Mom, How I Met Your Mother or any other filmed-in-front-of-a-live-audience comedy (nothing since Friends and Will & Grace has taken my fancy), I was somewhat cautious about checking out Friends With Better Lives (or FWBL).

Funnily enough, the show, starring James Van Der Beek (fresh of a stellar turn in Don’t Trust The Bitch in Apartment 23) was funny, entertaining and highly engaging.  Sure the humor was somewhat crude – but not to the level of 2 Broke Girls, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the first three episodes I watched and naturally assumed if people are watching the horribly unfunny Mom (sadly starring the talented Anna Faris) then people were watching FWBL.

Guess I was wrong, so needless to say, when CBS threw out their list of cancellations, I was shocked to see FWBL sitting on that list.

Another notable entry on their cancelled shows list was the Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Geller comedy The Crazy Ones.  Now, this show was the highest rated comedy debut of the 2012/2013 season in the US (15+ million viewers) but upon airing it’s season finale, only 5 million viewers were tuning in.

Also cancelled: Toni Collette drama Hostages, Kristin Davis comedy Bad Teacher (only after 4 episodes!) and the awful Intelligence starring LOST expat Josh Holloway and CSI Maven Marg Helgenberger.

The much hyped How I Met Your Mother spin-off How I Met Your Dad was also a no show on the list of pick-ups.

So what did CBS pick-up to series order?  Battle Creek by Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) and starring Josh Duhamel, The Tea’ Leoni led drama Madam Secretary plus another new CSI spin-off, CSI: New Orleans starring Scott Bakula.

In the way of comedy, Matthew Perry will be given another shot at a new series with The Odd Couple with Lindsay Sloane while New Kids on the Block singer Joe McIntyre plus ex Roseanne star Laurie Metcalf are headlining The McCarthys.

And finally, The Mentalist fans will be happy to hear the drama was given a last minute series renewal, though i’d expect this one to be it’s last.

What are your thoughts on the axings, cancellations and pick-ups?