It’s pretty common to talk about modern series, whether TV, film or literary, jumping the shark. But what about classic series? Can anyone think of examples of series more than, say, eighty years old, that jumped the shark?
I would propose Conan Doyle’s “Professor Challenger” series, that went totally off-track with “The Land of Mist”.
Any others?
The New Testament. Once they wrote Jesus out of it, it went straight in the toilet.
My memory is vague, but I think All in the Family jumped after the arrival of little Joey.
The Professor Challenger series is an excellent example; but I’ll be danged if I can think of any others.
…Although I do remember some literary critic’s comment that Holmes never seemed quite the same after the fall at the Reichenbach. 
Everyone’s heard of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but there are probably good reasons why Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective are less well-known.
There are literary examples, but most of the ones I know aren’t that old. L. Sprague de Camp, for example, once wrote that his own series of Johnny Black stories (Who? I hear you ask. Never mind) went downhuill after the very first story. In today’s language, it “jumped the shark” after the first installment.
One old example I’d give is the Christmas Books of Charles Dickens. He wrote five, of which “A Christmas Carol” was the first, and by far the best. I know there are folks who’d disagree with me, but I couldn’t stand any of the others, though I worked my way through them.
Speaking of Jumping the Shark, the official “Jump the Shark” Web site has jumped the shark big time. Last time I checked it was part of TV Guide’s Web site, and they don’t have crap on there anymore other than a few celebrity news stories. I used to love their searchable database of TV shows and read the comments people had left.
Yep – I have “Tom Sawyer, Detective” and it’s a total pot-boiler.
I guess the Oz books might qualify… there were 40 of them, written between 1900 and 1963… various writers took over after L. Frank Baum’s death, including the illustrator, John R. Neill, and some of the results were pretty spotty.
L Sprague was the model for Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers character Geoffrey Avalon. Sheesh, everybody knows that.
I would say that Twain jumped the shark when Tom showed up near the end of Huck Finn. From then on it was kiddie adventure time that continued in the latter books. Detective was a fun read for a 12 year old, but the first part of HF will always be a classic.
Jonathan
Anne of Green Gables is a classic. Anne of Avonlea is pretty good. The rest of the series is meh. Anne isn’t nearly as charming as an adult.
But I did like the scenes where Archie was complaining about Warren G. Harding.
psst read the OP a bit more closely this time.
I never could bear that series.
I read a lot of the first batch of Tom Swift books, which actually got better with time - for a while. By the mid-30s, the one I read had Tom fomenting a revolution in a South American country in order to get the metal he needed to build an ocean platform. I suspect Howard Garis had stopped writing them by that time, and it showed.
Homer’s Trojan War series really jumped the scylla before he reached The Iliad.
Tom Swift and his Ugly American ?
I saw what you did there…
I’ve been trying to decide if Gilbert & Sullivan jumped the shark, or if they just became less popular because of (a) changing fads and (b) the fact that they weren’t working well together any more. I suspect that their last couple of operettas are more or less unknown because of (b), rather than any particular shark-jumping, but I admit I’m not an expert on G&S.
Just confirmed that you are right! I mean all that’s left of the original is a menu of common shark jumping categories-everything else is gone zip kaput, click on a category and you get one short example, nothing else. Damned shame.
We’ll forget about the whole authorship problem, but two other points:
It’s generally agreed that The Iliad predates The Odyssey. Are you saying both are bad?
Are you just saying The Iliad is bad? Please give it another go if so. Book 2 is a drag (although it sounds good in the original), but the rest is fabulous. Try Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, or Christopher Logue’s retellings.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood you, though.
ETA In fact I think I have, and you were just making a joke! I’ll let this stand, though, just in case.