"Earth 2"

1994-1995
In a future when Earth is barely habitable, much of humanity lives on orbiting stations. A maverick billionaire builds a ship to explore a planet 22 light years away, hoping to colonize. The flight is sabotaged by the government, and the survivors must make their way on an unforgiving world.
For a while, the show lives up to this promising premise. You're rooting for it, because it stars a woman (Debrah Farentino) on the cusp of middle age, and a number of the creators are female as well. But eventually the other shoe drops, and the lack of any real vision or intelligence relegates it to second-rate.
The performances and visuals are wonderful. Clancy Brown (HIGHLANDER) and Rebecca Gayheart (JAWBREAKER) are a delight. Tim Curry and Terry O'Quinn (LOST) make lovely appearances. For Clancy in particular, one wished the series would have been smarter and longer. But unfortunate, simple-minded dips into ghosts, religion, and mawkish marital monogamy are leaden albatrosses around the show's neck. Poor Rebecca is saddled with a marriage that simply doesn't work, because her husband (John Gegenhuber) does so many stupid, utterly selfish things that it breaks the bonds of credibility to think that the group would have allowed him to remain (to say nothing of her loving him). On this, and in other ways, the potential for gritty, realistic humans teetering on the edge of survival, is glossed over and made "nice".