So… The choice is between easily-obtainable but unreliable information, or a very labor-intensive way to get more complete information.
I may be on a fool’s errand here. :smack:
Wheelz, it’s Chinatown.
I don’t know why I said that. Sorry.
Murphy Brown: 988 - Candice Bergen, Faith Ford, Charles Kimbrough, and Joe Regalbuto appeared in all 247 episodes.
If a show goes off the air for a while, then gets revised and restarted, does that count as a new series? If it does, they Jeopardy! might be a contender. IMDb lists 7295 episodes, with Alex Trebek in 7253, but I wonder if its data is incomplete for some reason. I’ve never heard of Trebek missing any episodes.
True. I was just checking Castle. They list seven actors as appearing in all 173 episodes (a PAI of 1211). But there were definitely episodes where Susan Sullivan, Molly Quinn, or Tamala Jones didn’t appear. And I’m pretty some of the other cast members might have missed a few episodes.
According to Wikipedia, Trebek missed one. He and Pat Sajak traded places for an April Fool’s joke.
Richard Dawson has to be up there for the original daytime “Family Feud”. Figuring every weekday for nine years @ 260/year, minus 22 for not going a full nine = 2318.
That should still count.
Found another example of IMDB shenanigans. They have John Spencer listed as appearing in all 155 episodes of The West Wing. This is, of course, not true. Spencer died during the recording of the seventh season and they had to rewrite the final episodes to account for his character’s sudden disappearance.
Fred Rogers beats out James Arness with 895 episodes of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Does it count if one of the actors actually passed away? What if his son replaced him?
Anyway, Last of the Summer Wine: Bill Owen and Peter Sallis were both in every episode from 1973 until Owen’s death in 1999. Then Sallis went on to be in every one until 2010.
But those short BBC seasons may keep them out of the running. There was always a third character that swapped around a bit, but those were flighty. They traded off every ten years or so.
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet chugged along for 14 seasons, and while David and Ricky each missed two episodes, Ozzie and Harriet rack up 870 points together.
As best I can recall, all nine of the major characters appeared in all 53 episodes of the initial run of Arrested Development (or at least the actors did - Jeffrey Tambor played twins Oscar and George senior, and there may have been episodes when “Oscar” appeared but the more significant “George” did not). Even if we don’t count Ron Howard’s voice-overs, that gives a respectable score of 53 x 9 = 477.
Things get messier if we count Netflix’s Season 4 (it probably reduces the score to zero, or at most 68, if Jason Bateman was in all the new episodes, and I think he alone was). If season 5 happens, and we all hope it will, well… never mind.
I could be wrong, but weren’t there a few “Friends” episodes without Matthew Perry? He went to rehab for a while, so Chandler was sent out of town on a business trip IIRC.
John Ratzenberger doesn’t count for “Cheers”. He was not considered a “regular” cast member until the third season. Even though he appeared in the very first episode, he was considered just one of the background characters for a while and didn’t appear in all the early episodes. (By the time he was officially added to the cast, he was appearing the week though.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Only Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan appeared in every single episode. (Nicholas Brendon was absent for one single s.7 ep.) 144 episodes total, for a grand total of 288.
Star Trek: the Next Generation – Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes are the only two cast members to appear in every last one of the 178 episodes. (That’s 356 total.)
Doctor Who - Ha!
According to IMDb, Hugh Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley, Tony Dow, and Jerry Mathers appeared in all 234 episodes of Leave It to Beaver, giving it a respectable PAI of 936. That’s according to the trivia entry, anyway; Billingsley and Mathers are listed as appearing in 235 eps, but that probably includes the unaired pilot.
Small, but consistent. Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have appeared in every single episode of Supernatural, just heading into its 12th season. They are the only two leads.
241 episodes.
Yeah, even though Last of the Summer Wine ran from 1973 to 2010, most seasons only had 6 episodes. There were 295 episodes total, and Peter Sallis is the only actor who appeared in all of them. That’s still a pretty good one-man total, though.
Matthew Perry was indeed in every episode. I’m not sure if Chandler’s transfer to Tulsa in season 9 had anything to do with Perry’s rehab. I thought he had cleaned up before that. It’s possible; there were a few episodes where he was isolated from the rest of the cast. But he did appear.
I was going with imdb’s episode count for Ratzenberger, and it shows him credited in every episode; I don’t know first-hand if that’s accurate. I’d say he counts even if he’s just sitting there sometimes, but he doesn’t count if there were any eps that he wasn’t in at all.
While I knew it wouldn’t rank as high as ones already mentioned, I went to IMDb and checked the score for the original run of Perry Mason.
Um. 0.
As in there are two episodes where Raymond Burr didn’t appear. I figured there’d be some episodes where Barbara Hale or William Hopper might not be in. (I remember one episode that takes place when Mason is at a cabin out in the sticks, but he at least calls people to check into things.) But no Perry Mason on Perry Mason!
271 episodes. Not an anthology type show or anything. Scores a 0. Wow.