Inspired by this thread
In your opinion, what TV lasted far longer than it should have? I’d vote for MAS*H.
The Simpsons. Case closed.
I think BobLibDem nailed it. Nothing else really comes close.
Ditto Simpsons. A lot of people still seem to enjoy it, though. I try watching a couple episodes every season, and it’s been a long time since its been funny for me.
Another vote for Simpsons. The show that would not die.
There can be no other answer.
I’m assuming that it’s cheap to produce and is therefore still earning money, but wouldn’t the main cast have to have been taking massive pay cuts over the least, oh, 15 years as ratings have slumped? Why aren’t the principles just sick of working on it by now?
Never underestimate the power of a regular paycheck, particularly in a gig that lets you work for a short time frame and then you have the rest of the year to pursue other interests. I was surprised to see Yeardley Smith pop up on Big Bang Theory, at one point.
That, and even if current ratings aren’t what they used to be, I notice that the merchandising is still fairly strong. And don’t forget those syndication packages. Hell, The Flintstones once had the rerun package from hell, and they didn’t have a fraction of the episodes that The Simpsons has.
So long as the network keeps paying and everyone on board keeps getting paychecks, it’s not gonna stop anytime soon.
Definitely The Simpsons.
South Park might be #2.
Maybe if they actually did jump the shark and aren’t still on top of their game and producing some of their best episodes. “You’re Getting Old” is collectively seen as one of the best episodes and it’s pretty recent. I loved “The Cissy” and the most recent season premiere about PC culture (though the 2nd episode was kinda rough).
Edit: I’d say that Big Bang had a swift and exponential decline as well and it needs to be mercy killed.
According to the Wikipedia articleon Yeardley Smith:
I have no idea what it takes to produce an episode of the show, but doing 22 shows a year doesn’t sound particularly onerous, especially when you’re getting paid about 6.6 million a year to do it. Not including residuals. Wow!
It has to be the longest running non-news program right? 28 seasons is unheard of.
I don’t know if SP is good or bad these days but it’s cultural relevance seems to have dropped dramatically. Once upon a time, each “events” episode was treated like an epiphany of truth by its viewers and you couldn’t get away from people thinking they had it all figured out since they saw it on South Park.
Of course, people no longer treating Parker & Stone as prophets doesn’t mean the humor itself is gone.
A vote for NCIS. How many more dead Marines can they find around Virginia?
The British sitcom Last of the Summer Wine ran from 1973 to 2010, with 31 seasons (or “series,” as they’re called in the UK), plus occasional Christmas specials. Although British shows generally don’t have as many episodes per season/series as American shows do, and as a little math will show you, not every year had a series in it.
To get a sense of its longevity, I like to compare it to another long-running British show: Doctor Who. When Last of the Summer Wine broadcast its first episode, the Doctor was Jon Pertwee. When it broadcast its final episode, the casting of Matt Smith had just been announced. Think about how much time went by between those two Doctors and you start to understand just how long it ran.
And, having seen quite a lot of it on PBS, I’d say it definitely went on well past its shark-jumping point.
This is not the same question as that asked by the thread title, if you allow that a show could jump the shark and then work its way back to being worth watching. Saturday Night Live arguably jumped the shark after season five ended, when the original cast left the show, but has lasted decades longer; but I certainly wouldn’t say it shouldn’t have lasted.
About as many as dead bodies in Cabot Cove.
SNL changes in the same way that pro football changes; the guys on the field aren’t necessarily the same guys that were out there last year.
SNL ran for five powerhouse years until 1980, at which point the cast was getting offers, the writers were getting offers, Lorne Michael was getting offers, and EVERYONE was burned out and ready to quit. And pretty much did. A book about the show I read once described the new producer as “inheriting the shell of a show,” and having to literally rebuild it from scratch, for the most part.
This led to trouble, as (a) the new cast was having to feel their way without exactly imitating the old bunch, (b) they were going to have to put up with people who wanted to know where Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were, and (c) producer Jean Doumanian reportedly understood comedy the way Trump understands immigration.
The result was, for all practical purposes, a completely new show, and HAS been a completely new show many times over its lengthy run. Performers burn out or move on.
The Simpsons, on the other hand…
Law & Order (TOS, not the two main spinoffs) told essentially the same story week after week, and every personnel change could be seen as a shark jump. Twenty years.
I must respectfully disagree.
Some personnel changes were for the better; Sam Waterston did some of the finest work of his career when Michael Moriarty got tired and quit.
…and to avoid telling the same story, they did throw in some major (and sometimes unlikely) twists on those stories.
But when Lennie Briscoe quit being there, that kind of killed it for me. There’d been enough personnel changes by then that it wasn’t the show I’d started with.