I'm a sucker for unsold pilots (I wrote the book on'em, after all), and here's a doozy: the never-aired, 2004 UPN pilot NIKKI & NORA, a proposed series about a pair of lesbian cops in New Orleans played by Liz Vassey and Christina Cox. The busted pilot was written by Nancylee Myatt, who was interviewed at AfterEllen about the experience:
"Christina Cox and Liz Vassey were amazing as lovers and cops, and the city of New Orleans was a fabulous location to shoot: production-friendly and gay-friendly. The network has been very supportive of the show. There were very few things that they asked us to tame down, and most of those discussions happened during the script development process and long before we ever went on location. In fact, most everything we ended up putting in the final shooting draft got shot and ended up in the pilot. So the rumors about a tamer version of the show are really not true.
We did some testing during our post process and ultimately decided not to include one kiss we shot for the opening of the show, but only because it was not appropriate for the scene, not because it was too racy. I am very happy with this intimate look at a lesbian couple — after all, it is a prime-time network show, and this is ground-breaking on all fronts. Gotta start somewhere."
Is that Don Cheadle I see at the end?!