Passing the torch as in a character is successfully replaced and the series continues. This happens all the time in cinema but almost never works (see Shia LaBeouf with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Jeremy Renner with both Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol and The Bourne Series, and others)
For a passing the torch to happen though the replacement character and the original character have to be on screen together for a large portion of the work before the torch gets passed. So for example, Doctor regenerations in Doctor Who, times with characters are replaced suddenly because something happened with the actor like Fast & Furious, or sequels set in the same universe but the new actor and original actors never interacted don’t count. Also spinoffs don’t count if the original series continued while the spinoff started, there has to be a firm end of one character and start of another.
Books seem to do this a lot (see Tom Clancy with the Jack Ryan Jr stuff) but clearly these new Tom Clancy books are nowhere near as popular as the original ones with Jack Ryan Sr, so they’re kind of an iffy case of a torch pass.
I’d agree that it’s much more common (and successful) in written works rather than movies.
Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince Trilogy was the first to come to mind, with the first novel being the “parent’s” generation, the second with a balance between the parent’s generation and the son as a teen, and the last being predominantly the son’s search for his identity and meaning while his father is still ruling.
A LOT more going on, but spoilers.
In terms of other ones of note, maybe the Core Emberverse novels would count, before it got a bit too out of control, but the cast tends to be large and split into multiple sub-casts, still should work. And Jennifer Roberson’s Cheysuli novel covers seven generations of a magical ruling dynasty, though normally each book is around one single generation with the prior generations being minor supporting characters (or dead).
I can think of several other series, but most of them are less serious or story driven, such as the Xanth series, but the characters are already more vehicles to joke about the setting or world.
The Trope - many examples, up to the viewer to determine if they’re successful in doing so:
Well, Chris Evans seems to have passed the torch of Captain America successfully to Anthony Mackie. Mackie has received overall positive reviews as the character, even if the projects he was in haven’t been as good as the early phases of the MCU.
Midsomer Murders had Detective Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) giving way to Detective John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon). John was introduced while Tom was still the lead, took over, and continued for years.
Definitely not. From the OP: “For a passing the torch to happen though the replacement character and the original character have to be on screen together for a large portion of the work before the torch gets passed.”
The original Law & Order, maybe? Especially with the detectives. The clearest case of passing the torch is when Green, who was the “junior detective” for years, became the “senior detective” when Farina left
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics” had the chief engineer Montgomery “Scottie” Scott from The Original Series appear and tell the new chief engineer Geordie Leforge that any ship is only as good as her chief engineer, and he is confident that the current Enterprise is in good hands with La Forge.
That’s a really great and clear example of successful torch-passing.
I don’t know if the same thing happened with the series Death in Paradise - the lead detective changes quite a few times throughout the series, but I don’t recall watching an episode where the change actually took place, so I am not sure if it meets the OP’s character-overlap requirements for torch-passing (in some cases it definitely doesn’t - as the new lead arrives on the premise of investigating the death of the previous lead).
Also Morse and Lewis - Lewis was Morse’s sidekick; Morse dies and that’s the end of the Morse series; Lewis continues with Lewis as the main character (making frequent reference to Morse in the early part). I would argue that it’s not really a spinoff as the name of the series is the only thing that substantially changed, and arguably, the entirety of the Morse phase of the series was the handover.
The long-running Scottish TV detective series Taggart continued running after the actor playing DCI Jim Taggart died - Taggart’s long-suffering sidekick was promoted to DCI and took over as lead character and the series continued to air as Taggart for another 15 years (including further changes of lead character).
IIRC there was some torch-passing mid-season 6 when Kris Marshall left and was replaced by Ardal O’Hanlon, but all the rest of the transitions were pretty much just “Welp, that guy’s gone, here’s the new guy”.
The Character of Blake left Blake’s 7 (British SciFi series) after the first two seasons although he popped back once or twice in the final two seasons
That’s what I was going to mention, but it didn’t have the two characters interact on-screen for the torch-passing, like the OP required (Sinclair did eventually make another appearance, but only well after Sheridan was established as the new commander).
I think Captain America is probably the best example. It even has a literal object being passed as the symbol of the role.
