Agreed on Derry Girls.
I’d also add Reservation Dogs. I watched the series twice and can’t think of any bad episodes.
Justified
All Creatures Great & Small
Call the Midwife
Saw the thread title and came to nominate The Good Place but was ninja’ed from the get go. Not only hits all the OP’s criteria, but has the greatest twist in TV history (all respect to Newhart, but it’s the difference between “What an awesomely clever way to end a series” and “Holy mother forking shirtballs!”).
I can get behind Breaking Bad and BCS as well.
They had a clip show episode (Mama’s Review). No clip show episode is good, by definition.
Except “Lou Dates Mary”. Did they have to try to pair Mares up with everyone? That was just cringeworthy. At least she never dated Ted.
Nothing is perfect, but I think ‘The Prisoner’ comes close?
As long as you don’t include Justified: City Primeval as part of the original show.
I’ll nominate Detectorists.
I saw a third alternative a couple weeks ago on MeTV:
I wanted to add Derry Girls, but COVID did a number on season 3 on top of the puberty. If it’s all going to be awkward lean into it for the comedy! But they didn’t, just threw in a couple of big name cameos.
For a comedy with heart it had a solid ending though.
I thought that final season was absolutely inferior to the first 2. So not perfect sadly, but I agree a very solid finish.
There’s also a hilarious “outtakes” reel available where the actors all get to use some extraordinarily colorful language.
Cheers, I’ll give it a try.
To be fair, that episode originally aired after a two-month hiatus. The Thanksgiving episode might well have been the penultimate without it.
I love The Dick Van Dyke Show as much as anyone, but it had a few duds here and there. Like “The Twizzle,” where Sally discovers a new pop singer in a bowling alley, but he really longs to sing show tunes. Or the one where Rob and Laura are trying to find dates for their new neighbor, who turns out to be a wife-beater. Or the one where Rob dreams he’s back in the “good old days” where he’s a gentleman of leisure who doesn’t have to help with any chores around the house. Or the one where Chad and Jeremy pretended to be The Beatles.
The original 20 season run of Law & Order was perfect in IMHO.
And Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was great as well.
Also The Mandalorian And Star Trek: Lower Decks
I’ll vote for Adult Swim’s Delocated. A great absurd dark comedy from beginning to end.
One of the last episodes of the final season had Murray, Lou and Ted sharing a bottle and imagining life married to Mary. Ted’s vignette had one of my favorite lines in the series:
On their wedding night, when the bellhop carries their bags into their room, he asks Ted, “Would you like me to show you where everything is?”
Ted replies, “No, I’m sure she’ll tell me”.
For it’s time, Miami Vice. Unfortunately it doesn’t hold up well.
Fifty-plus replies and no one has mentioned The Wire, the greatest TV show ever made? Sheeeeeee-ittttt!
Yes, Season 5 was not up to the standard of the first four, but considering how good they were, S5 still rates as better than 99% of other shows.
The original run (first three seasons) of Arrested Development.
The later Netflix revival doesn’t count. But I loved, loved, LOVED it from the very first moments. I think it was the introduction of Tony Hale as Buster, and Jason Bateman’s no-winking deadpan. Oh, and David Cross as Tobias.
Just a great show.
I disagree about MTM. The episodes in which Mary was dating the dweeb of the month were nowhere near as good as the ones centered on the people around her. They were what made the show funny, while Mary herself seldom made me laugh.
Two series I never miss are Heartbeat and (ignoring the two "prequels*, i.e., failed pilots) Doc Martin. I’ve been watching both from the beginning. Not only did they “hit the ground running” (the Nick/Kate and Martin/Louisa relationships were established before the first commercial), I’ve never seen either one have a bad story. Both series evolve naturally with people coming and going, just like in real life.
Two others in the same vein were Danger:UXB with its butt-clenching tension, and Foyle’s War, which transitioned seamlessly from WWII to post-war espionage.
If we’re including documentaries and docudramas, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R were two of the series that got me hooked on PBS back in the '70s (Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I in the latter was especially briliant). I, Claudius should be included here, since it was based mainly on the writings of Suetonius, and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man was a university-level course on civilization presented in 13 episodes.