What series of books, or movies has the most even level of quality throughout?
(I guess I’m looking for something more interesting than “Every Danielle Steele book is shitty and awful, so they’re consistent”).
For me, it’s the Harry Potter movies. Every one of them I’ve enjoyed. I’ve walked out of the theatre with a smile on my face. I gave it a thumbs up. But none of them have been extraordinary. None have even really transcended the action-fantasy-fun genre. They’ve all had pretty good visuals, some humor, surprisingly good acting from well-cast high-quality adult actors, and adequate-to-decent acting from child actors (which, not surprisingly, has improved as the children have grown older).
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. They get somewhat boring toward the end, but on the whole, they’re the finest series of novels I’ve ever read.
Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series
James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small series
P.N. Elrod’s The Vampire Files (except for book 4)
Dan Simmons’ Hyperion books
I’ll agree about the Aubrey/Maturn books, except for the part about them getting boring toward the end.
But if the acting has improved as the series progresses, then the quality isn’t really even. In any case, I thought the first two were pretty inferior to the latter movies (haven’t seen the latest one) both due to improvements by the child actors and better directors. YMMV
Came in here to mention the already mentioned O’Brian books, which aren’t only impressive for being consistent, but being consistent over more then 20 installments.
Since I can only think of series where the opposite is true, I started a rival thread. Feel free to drop by if you can think of any. Meanwhile, I’ll come back here and post if I can think of any series that fit the OP’s criteria.
Not many people seem to share this opinion, but I would nominate the Alien series. Each of the four movies has a very different tone, but they’re all compelling in their own way IMO, and form a satisfying overall story arc for Ellen Ripley.
I’d say the Indiana Jones series has been consistently good so far; it remains to be seen whether Indy 4 will continue the trend.
I think the recent Spiderman and X-Men movie series have been pretty consistent; they’re all in the “pretty good; good for what they are” range, and considering the vastly uneven quality of Marvel Comics film adaptations in the last 10 years, that’s saying something.
I haven’t read all of John McDonald’s Travis McGee books, but the ones I’ve read so far have been very consistent. Ditto the Marlowe books.
It’s TV, but I’ve also been impressed so far (we’re on season 3) with the consistency of Scrubs. And of course Deadwood. There are no so-so episodes of that one at all.
O’Brien and Pratchett I’m totally down with. However, I loathed the first Harry Potter movie and really enjoyed #4. And while I loved Red Mars and kind of enjoyed Green Mars, I never was able to finish Blue Mars.
As for my own contribution, I’ll say Neil Gaiman’s Sandman run. Some were better than others, but I thought they were all pretty wonderful.
I disagree. I think that the second entries of both series were EXTREMELY good, about as good as a big budget film adaptation of a comic book COULD be, coming close to transcending the genre; and in both cases the third movie was just big budget popcorn fun, but nothing more.
Except for (and this seems to be a fairly universally held opinion) the tedious and pointless storyline with the actors.
If you want to expand things to TV series, you gotta go for The Wire. It’s my pick for the best TV show of all time. It’s run for 4 seasons, and I could quite reasonably see an argument for any of the 4 being the strongest.
Well, the theater troupe did give us Amateur Night, with Richardson juggling and Al singing. I agree that their arc wasn’t complete, but individual scenes with them were pretty good, especially the ones with Langrishe and his ailing friend.
The Tarzan books held up remarkably well, as did the Barsoom books. Tarzan of the Apes might be my least favorite, since it moved more slowly than the others. Burroughs got playful as he got more confident, and I enjoyed the bits of humor and satire he threw into the later books.
Most series books written to a formula (like Doc Savage, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift) are consistent, since they have no development. (I know Doc came from a magazine.) The original Tom Swift books actually got a bit better with time, as Tom went from a person who sped up boats and motorcyles to being a defense contractor.
