I thought Soap was the perfect parody.
It started out great- a detective with a quirk, serious real mysteries with a tad of humor. Then later it turned into a broad farce with Monk being a guy with quirks, who - oh yeah also solves mysteries, and the SFPD turned into Keystone Kops.
Barney Miller was great until the end, but I think it stopped just at the right moment. Yes, first season got off to a slow start, but that shows the genius of the showrunners- they saw which way the wind was blowing and were wise enough to make a course correction.
Seasons 2, 3 &4 were genius.
I see your point here.
I agree on Deadwood- canceled too early, damn HBO, and WKRP, The Wire was too dark for me.,
I obviously agree on Barney Miller, and also Dead Like Me- did you see the movie that tied everything up?
But Rome at least didnt end on a cliffhanger. Great series however.
A small gem indeed.
True. But Season 5 was great so overall pretty damn good,
We never did find out what happened to Caesarion, did we?
Spaced fits the OP for me. Consistently good, very rewatchable, and stuck around exactly as long as it needed to.
Good call on this one. Seconded.
I had a friend back in the 90s who speculated about using digital projection in movie theaters. He figured that just uploading a data file would be a lot easier than hauling around huge film reels.
I told him he was nuts. The resolution you’d need in a digital image to match the grain size of a film frame would be insane. Never going to happen!
D’oh!
+1
Having just finished Murderbot, that is a strong contender.
Isn’t the last episode of Murderbot still unaired? Episode 10, July 11th?
Well, how embarrassing.
spoilerish
The latest episode seemed so final. And what an ending it would have been, it’s why I posted it here!
I’d nominate The Expanse in that category.
Brilliant from start to finish.
I just finished the first season of Ricky Gervais’ After Life, and I’m really impressed. It had no bad episodes, the characters grow and learn, and the season has a satisfying end. I just hope the other seasons are the same. Of course, you have to understand Ricky Gervais’ style of humor, but there are several side characters they I recognize from other shows and movies (Crunk!)
I just got to thinking about the British version of Life on Mars, which I really enjoyed 20-odd years ago and would like to see again if it’s available anywhere. I got drawn into the continuing story right from the start, but don’t remember seeing the finale for some reason.
A bit ironically, I don’t think that show aged well.
It was a very “Millennial” series, that’s for sure. But I’d still like to see how it aged for myself.
I think it’s available on Britbox.
Twin Peaks was heading there, I think. When Lynch had control of it, in season 1, it was perfect, and the second season started out great, but then viewer letters started raining in on the studio, from viewers wanting to know “Who killed Laura Palmer??”
Personally, I was satisfied knowing that an evil spirit named Bob killed her, or orchestrated her murder.
I didn’t need an episode showing Bob possessing someone in particular. For me, that part just brought it down to the level of a L&O:SVU (which show has it’s good points, but it is realistic and gritty. Twin Peaks at least partly takes place in the ether, and needs to leave some things to the imagination.
It was always a middling (heh), run-of-the-mill network sitcom even when it was at its best, but for the purposes of this thread I think The Middle qualifies. The cast was the perfect mix of established sitcom actors (Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn) and up-and-comers (Eden Sher, Atticus Shaeffer, Charlie McDermott). It hit the ground running from Episode 1 and never lost steam until the end, in Season 9. In that time two kids went off to college and the third progressed from (I think) a third grader to a high school student. The show ended on a high note, and it left the audience wanting more.
The show was popular with the audience, and critics seemed to like it but not enthusiastically so. The other ABC family sitcom from that time, Modern Family, has an overstuffed trophy cabinet filled with various Emmys, whereas The Middle won exactly zero and was only nominated once. Still, on the whole I’d say that Modern Family had some growing pains (particularly in that it gradually moved away from the mockumentary style and by later seasons treated the asides to the audience less like documentary bits but rather just breaking the fourth wall) and a few dud episodes, and its cast of kids … well, their acting chops didn’t grow as the kids did.
Regarding The Middle, there was a plan for a spin-off featuring Eden Sher as the daughter on her own working someplace. But for some reason it never went anywhere. And really the networks have few sitcoms left.
You’re thinking of Sue Sue in the City, for which a pilot was shot but Covid killed it (at least, it was mostly Covid that killed it, according to Eden Sher and Brock Ciarlelli’s podcast). She was goi g to be the manager of a hotel in Chicago. In characteristic Sue fashion, she thinks it’s going to be beautiful but it turns out to be a dump.