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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also?

Young Ones

Filthy, Rich & Catflap

Bottom

Black Books

Father Ted

Black Books

Spaced.

None made it to five seasons. Most classic UK shows don't, which is a shame because it excludes a lo t of fantastic stuff that very deliberately stopped at a peak.

DS9. Peep Show (whose final season may actually be its best - it certainly has my favourite episode in the dinner party).

The Sopranos and The Wire both dip at the end but not massively so and are still excellent tv. They'd just set obscenely high bars. SG1 also dips a bit but it's still fun. B5 dips quite a bit further but I'm still largely glad I watched the last season. I'm glad I saw out Buffy and The Shield too but they definitely have their weaker runs.

Review with Myles Barlow: He reviewed some messed up stuff at times but it was all fun.
Chase's war on everything: Because things should not always be taken seriously.

IT crowd
Black books



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Holy gak, forgot about Sharpe
Oh and Walking with dinosaurs and Walking with beasts. That was awesome.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Clone wars as well might as well add.

I love The Inbetweeners. They absolutely nailed what it's like to be a British middle-class teenager. Have watched it over and over.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Anyway, this is for Ouze:

I mean, he is asking the real questions.

Forgot:

Friends
Simpsons
Southpark

so much to enjoy in all of them

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
I also feel the need to point out that the fact that Firefly didn't run for at least 5 seasons is a crime against humanity.

I am certain there’s a parallel universe where Firefly fans wish the show had ended after the first season, before the flaws became too overwhelming to ignore.

2000AD had a strip that ran for a while (survival geeks) that touched on the alternate universe take on things.



The poster that mentions Firefly having more than one season - but note also, that most if not all of the other genre properties seen are gender-swapped, so while Firefly may have been renewed, it wasn't under (male) "Captain Tightpants".

Ooh, and Burn Notice. One of the wonderfully cheesy spy comedies, it was able to remain fun and exciting throughout its run.

Unlike poor Chuck, which turned one too many folks into the Intersect. I finished it... but by the end it was a disaster.

Judge Dredd in terms of comics.

Got 90 volumes from the Mega Collection, read them all with only Cal Hab being rubbish, mostly due to awful art.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Oohh, I forgot 'Allo, 'Allo.
Barring Blackadder and maybe Monty Python, best comedy show ever.

Truth. The series went on as long or longer than the actual war! IIRC....

Also watched all of Burn Notice. Sam Axe for the win!

Parks and Rec
30 Rock
Archer

Everything else I can think of I would skip episodes, films, or just stop at a certain point. For example I enjoy the first four seasons of The West Wing but once Sorkin left it gets far less interesting and really seems to be stretching for drama. For Star Trek (films) the only one I really like enough to watch occasionally is Wrath of Khan, and with the TV show the only one I really watch occasionally is TOS but I rarely watch all of the episodes. I did recently watch only the Q episodes of TNG.

There are a few anime films I enjoy or parts of series but to much of it goes on and on and on and on and on for my taste. Cowboy Bebop would be one I could watch all of that didn't wear out its welcome.

Honorable mentions to The IT Crowd and That Mitchell and Webb Look. They didn't get to be up there as neither had five series/seasons but both are imminently rewatchable.

For long running book series, I’m still interested in The Dresden Files. I find it to be the most enjoyable urban fantasy series I’ve read. I also finished Butcher’s Codex Alera series, which became readable in the second book and stayed strong up until the rushed-feeling last book. I may have to reread the series while assembling my Goritsi Gotha Knights for the delightful armored wolfen faction.


I also finished the Kitty Norville series, which is a lower-powered setting about werewolves and the like with a decidedly Blue State take on things (the opposite sensibility to the Mercy Thompson werewolf series). Kitty Norville started weakly but got stronger as it went on. The last book felt a little rushed, but ultimately satisfying.

Books - very long running series

Matzlan Book of the Fallen - Stepehn Erikson
"Chung Ko" Series - David Wingrove
"Falco" (and his daughter) Detective novels - Lyndsey Davies
"I Claudia" novels - Maryln Todd
"Tyrant" Series - Christian Cameron

Discworld. All of it. It’s ace

Sons Of Anarchy
Deadwood
Uno( Norwegian film)
Boondocks
Millennium series, amazing crime, and all-around goodness

I had forgotten about West Wing... That's another that the wife and I watched to the end, but came in halfway through. Only complaint with that one was that it needed more Alan Alda.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Discworld. All of it. It’s ace

Yeah good point !

From the other thread:
Bojack.

Being British, pretty much everything I'd put here can't compete

I guess Scrubs, even if the last season was kinda bad but I didn't regret the entire show?

Community

A fair few British crime shows were good, but their episodes per series ratio rather unfairly favours them.

 Jadenim wrote:
Hmmm. First thought was SG-1, although the Ori seasons were a bit weaker, it didn’t have an overwhelming downturn.

DS9 probably, as that just seemed to get steadily better over the years and ended in a reasonable, planned, way, instead of petering out or stopping dead.

Definitely DS9 here. I did make it to the end of SG-1, but it was a close-run thing.

Farscape, if that qualifies - though oddly I'd didn't particularly like Browder and Black in SG-1, both felt more like a pity hire by Sci-Fi (or 'Syfy' for whatever stupid reason)

Venture Brothers...still waiting on that next season (again)



Pretty sure I got to the end of Voyager and Next Generation, but I can't say how much I actually watched in an active sense. Same with SG: Atlantis- just sort of checked out towards the last two seasons.
Watched all four seasons of Babylon 5. Didn't bother with TNTylon 5's first season. [For those outside the US, Turner Network Television picked it up after the story wrapped and made... demands)

The best, no regrets:
Breaking Bad
The Wire


Unpopular opinion:
Game of Thrones
Lost

Close but had some flaws:
The Sopranos

Voss wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
Hmmm. First thought was SG-1, although the Ori seasons were a bit weaker, it didn’t have an overwhelming downturn.

DS9 probably, as that just seemed to get steadily better over the years and ended in a reasonable, planned, way, instead of petering out or stopping dead.

Definitely DS9 here. I did make it to the end of SG-1, but it was a close-run thing.

Farscape, if that qualifies - though oddly I'd didn't particularly like Browder and Black in SG-1, both felt more like a pity hire by Sci-Fi (or 'Syfy' for whatever stupid reason)

Venture Brothers...still waiting on that next season (again)



Pretty sure I got to the end of Voyager and Next Generation, but I can't say how much I actually watched in an active sense. Same with SG: Atlantis- just sort of checked out towards the last two seasons.
Watched all four seasons of Babylon 5. Didn't bother with TNTylon 5's first season. [For those outside the US, Turner Network Television picked it up after the story wrapped and made... demands)

I didn’t put either B5 or Farscape, because they both got rushed / mucked about at the end because of network demands.

Voyager’s an interesting one, because I feel like it ended strong and didn’t run itself too long, but the first season is soo ropey, and 2 isn’t great.

Voyager lost me at the “get this cheese to sickbay” episode, but reruns, the Doctor and Seven pulled me back in before the final season.

B5 had issues with the final season, but even on its own, that last season was still more narratively cohesive and well done that it's still better than most shows, and doesn't take a turd on the rest of the show at the very end the way BSG/GoT/Dexter/etc did, and without that last season, you miss a lot of the development and finishing out of the more interesting character's arcs (e.g. Mollari, G'kar, Alexander, Garabaldi, etc) and some solid Bester moments.

I'd have thrown Farscape in there, but I think it only got to 4 seasons.

 Vaktathi wrote:
B5 had issues with the final season, but even on its own, that last season was still more narratively cohesive and well done that it's still better than most shows, and doesn't take a turd on the rest of the show at the very end the way BSG/GoT/Dexter/etc did, and without that last season, you miss a lot of the development and finishing out of the more interesting character's arcs (e.g. Mollari, G'kar, Alexander, Garabaldi, etc) and some solid Bester moments.

I'd have thrown Farscape in there, but I think it only got to 4 seasons.

Farscape did have the mini series as well....

B5 is one of my favourites but it did become quite uneven.

Notably B5 and nBSG had similar final season issues.

Babylon 5 was written to be a five season arc. Around season 3, they were told ‘one more season’. So 4 and 5 were condensed into one. Only to be told ‘k, you can have the fifth season’.

NBSG? Writer’s strike in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

No, they did not have same final season issues. Stop that.

B5 still maintained continuity and character integrity. The character arcs may have been stretched, but they were coherent and meaningful. The last episode was fantastic and wrapped up a lot of the themes of the series while giving the characters one last warm moment together.

NBSG...nope.

Just because no one likes Byron or the Harlan Ellison episode doesn’t mean the whole season is a turd or that it betrays the audience’s trust for a flashy, poorly-thought-out reveal.

M.A.S.H. I even thought the cast changes halfway through improved it.

Star Trek TNG and DS9.

Cheers and Frasier.

Dad's Army!

Let's see

Sharpe
La Femme Nikita
Lethal Weapon
Star Trek SNG
Marvel (all of it)
Rambo
Twilight
Friends
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Grey's Anatomy
Sons of Anarchy
Walking Dead
China Beach
Dexter
Breaking Bad
Batman

I know I'm forgetting lots.

How could I have forgotten Mythbusters!?!

Deep Space 9 all the way. First season is uneven, but second season on is a masterpiece.

Babylon 5. Even the weak final season was worth watching.

Classic Dr Who. Some episodes are bad (Snakedance). Some episodes are *really* bad (Twin Delemna). But more than a few episodes are Caves of Androzani. So there.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't count the comic book "season" at all, and the last season on TV was uneven at best, but I don't regret watching the whole way through. Managed to get my mother into the show,and I've no idea how that happened.


Now, in the category of "I don't care about your rules, man. You're not my real Dad" I have:

BLAKE'S 7 (only four seasons long, but it did things in 1980 that American TV was scared to due until the late 90s)

Robotech (daily cartoon, technically only 1 season; yes it is a Frankenstein monster carved from three unrelated anime shows and it's a travesty and horrible and shut up. It's the only reason we have an anime following in the US at all. You enjoy Cowboy Beebop or My Hero Acadamia or Death Note? Thank Carl Macek)

Space Precinct (two seasons, Gerry Anderson, puppets and rubber alien heads, low budget sci-fi, and slathering of cheese over it all. And I loved every single stupid episode of it)