Well, unless you count Reichenbach Falls as a decline.
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Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Nightwatch, which is the last one published that I’ve read (I’m reading Monstrous Regiment now) was in my opinion, the best of the series, and I know I’m not alone thinking that.
Err…that’s an unfortunate example. In the eyes of most of the Pratchett fans I know, Monstrous Regiment didn’t happen. Doesn’t exist at all. Going Postal isn’t as good as Nightwatch, but returns to what we expect of Pratchett.
There are those who believe that Aliens was better than Alien. I strongly believe that Angel was getting better up to the last season (I believe the final season was the best of them). Oh, it takes longer and longer before I find Laura K. Hamilton’s books piss me off; I was annoyed by the tenth page of Guilty Pleasures, but Full Moon didn’t piss me off until the last hundred pages.
On the whole, though, yes, it does seem that series get worse as they go on. The better an author understands the characters and lets them grow and react to the events in the series, the less this seems to be true.
I think a large part of this is that generally sequels only get made when the original is good or popular. TV shows that start off badly just get cancelled, and don’t have time to improve.
There was a recent thread about the Hitchhiker’s Guide, saying that the quality of the books went down as the series went along. But that’s because the first book was so great; if it had been poor, then either Adams would have quit writing them, or people wouldn’t have read the rest of the books.
If a series starts off great, then all it can do is continue at that level or go down.
I can’t find the quote, but I remember C.S. Lewis (I think?) saying something like, “There are only two times to end something. One is before everyone is tired of it. The other is after.”
Most of the British comedies I like called it quits before the suck settled in. The Good Life is a good example. I got the DVDs and there’s an interview with one of the writers. He says that after 4 series of 7 eps, they had run out of things to say about the show’s main subject (a 40-yr old man gets tired of the rat race and decides to become self sufficient - right in the middle of an upper middle class London suburb), so they called it quits. They did do two specials - one for Christmas and a Royal Command Performance for the queen.
Red Dwarf, OTOH, should have stopped after six series. Some say four.
How many Pratchett fans do you know - one, including yourself?
I know a great number of Pratchett fans. Not all of them thought MR was great, but none of them thought it was Highlander II bad.
Maybe two dozen in real life, and it is routinely thrashed on Cafe Society. I will grant that it isn’t Highlander II bad, but in the context of this thread, it is a terrible example, simply because it is a pretty pointless book after an exceptionally good book. To be fair, it doesn’t have the feel of a series in sudden decline, but rather the poor execution of a reasonably good idea.
How many of the Pratchett fans that you know felt it was as good or better than Nightwatch?
I don’t necessarily think an author’s talent decreases. Some sell out. The money from one more book… Frank Herbert comes to mind.
Some, I think lose sight of where their story was supposed to go. We may not know where it was to go, but we know it didn’t get there. (at the risk of blasphemy) Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
But, Mostly, I think author’s get tired of their characters. They start out as old friends, and often become nagging albatrosses.
I wonder if Ian Fleming wouldn’t have loved to drop ol’ James down a well after a while.
Of course, there are those who “had one book in them” but they aren’t so hard to recognize, because the story takes you, but even so you hear the wheels grind ever so quietly. Jean Auel, maybe. (don’t hit!)
Larry McMurtry, James Clavell, J.K. Rowling, and Patricia Cornwell have all kept their tales breathing, if not to the bitter end, at least, long enough.
Movies eh, don’t watch many. Give me a book!
Just my opinion. 
That sounds like the Wheel of Time series. By now, the series has become so hopelessly convoluted that I doubt that even the author, Robert Jordan, can keep track of what’s going on. That’s the only explanation for the last couple of books.
A few. Most people I know - which is to say, the assembled members of alt.fan.pratchett and associated bodies - think it was a good book, if not one of the greats.
That’s scarcely the point, though - it’s not us getting hyperbolic en grande masse.
I was going to point out that I didn’t spend time on AFP, and perhaps the denizens thereof have seen something I, and my assembled Pratchett-fan friends have not. It is also possible that, since many of the Pratchett fans I know are playing catch-up (reading five or more books a year) that the let down is harder; MR goes as quite let down after Nightwatch, and perhaps less so if time has passed between the books. It is also possible that this is a regional thing; the US doesn’t have the tradition toward Regiments that other counties have, so perhaps the basic premise resonates with us less (and if one takes away the raison d’etre for the book, it becomes less interesting). Regardless, we have all found it easier to believe that the book was a typo, rather than a decline of an exceptional author.
The 007 film franchise has had its ups and downs, but you really can’t say it peaked with Dr. No, and some of the most recent ones, viewed objectively, are as good as Goldfinger and Thunderball. Blame bad sequels on bad directors, not on their sequelhood.
Actually, I have observed an interesting thing about Pratchett’s books and his fans. All of the fans that I have talked to, in person or virtually–which amounts to several dozen at least–agree that some of his books are better than others. However, none of them agree **which ** books are the best and the worst. They would all agree that there is no pattern indicating decline.
A LOT of fans think *Pyramids * and *Moving Pictures * are real dogs–and they are two of my personal favorites. They are early in the series, by the way.
Sorry, I of course agree with you. IMHO, Going Postal isn’t as good as Nightwatch; others may of course disagree (there are brilliant bits to Going Postal). I am, as it happens, terribly fond of Moving Pictures, but I think on the whole Pratchett has become a better writer with (almost) every book he has published.
The thing that makes Night Watch a great book, as opposed to just a good one, is the plot. Something about “seeing yourself as a youngster” and “fighting the good fight even when you know you are going to lose.” There is something at the heart of Night Watch that grabs the human soul. GP and MR are good reads, but they aren’t visceral the way NW is.
But taken as a whole…Discworld has just gotten better and better.
(Another vote for Moving Pictures being a favorite!)
There’s Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, both of which are fabulous.
Yeah, most of the series I remember from my childhood too did that. I recalled watching a series for ages only to check a TV nostalgia site and find it only went on for a dozen or so eps 
Maybe kids are more forgiving to re-runs 
All of you are attributing “decline” to things the authors do.
I think a big factor in it is the audience. Take something like the Simpson’s. There’s something you bring to each new episode: knowledge of everything before it. The writers need to contend with the audience’s expectations of characters, what the audience likes and doesn’t like. YOU come to the shows with a lot of baggage.
In other words, if you took a guy who had been living in a cave for 15 years and played him Simpsons episodes from 2003 and 1994, I don’t think its a foregone conclusion that he thinks the early ones are funnier.
And even if it is true with the Simpson’s, I don’t think its necessarily true with everything.
For instance, what gets repeated and quoted from the Simpsons. . .the bad jokes that fell flat and the boring episodes? NO. We remember the funniest jokes and the best episodes. That’s what you’re weighing your expectations against.
Most of the women. And I liked it quite a bit. Nightwatch is hardly Pratchett’s best, anyway – Small Gods is much superior.
Both Andrew Vachss’s “Burke” mysteries and Kinky Friedman’s “Kinky Friedman” mysteries started out really great–Wow, mysteries with really fringe NYC characters! That concept got really, really old really fast.
I won’t even discuss Ann Rule’s true crime books–she was great, then good, and now just tedious.