The Non-Return of Arrested Development

So it looks like "Arrested Development" won't be coming back after all, or if it does, it'll have to be without its creator/showrunner Mitch Hurwitz and his second-in-command Jim Vallely:

Series producers 20th Century Fox TV and Imagine TelevisionImagine Television had agreed on a deal to move "Arrested," previously on Fox, to Showtime -- assuming Hurwitz was willing to come back. In the end, however, a mix of creative and financial concerns has prompted Hurwitz to move on.

It's been previously indicated that no network would want the show back without Hurwitz running it; it's one of those shows that is so dependent on the style of its showrunner that it probably wouldn't work under anybody else, whereas other shows can change showrunners and go on more or less normally, because the characters hold up no matter who's writing for them. The characters on "Arrested Development" are so tied into the fragmented style of the show that they probably wouldn't be of much interest if someone else were writing for them.

As for other shows that were heavily dependent on having the original showrunner stick around, think of "Moonlighting" and Glenn Gordon Caron (but don't think of the last season after he left) or any David E. Kelley quirkfest.