All Over The Map: Few clues in mysterious disappearance of 'Wheeler & Murdoch'

One likely reason that the pilot never became a regular series was because the pilot got really bad reviews from multiple TV critics, some of whom savaged its overall cheesiness or singled out its bad dialog. The TV critic for the Buffalo Evening News wrote that "Wheeler & Murdoch" was "[c]rammed with outdoor action and nightclub scenes as phony as a $3 bill" and the show "noisy, nasty and overblown."