Key and Peele was a hilarious sketch comedy show. When they ran out of ideas after 5 seasons, they ended it. And now every re-run is watchable.
The Wild Wild West was going strong, but was cancelled because it was too violent.
Third Rock From the Sun I will contend ended at the right moment - just before they started running on momentum.
I suspect many other series didn’t necessarily run out of ideas - I just got tired of the premise or the writing or the schtick.
Regards,
Shodan
Wasn’t Bean literally a big-named star brought on board for the 1st season explicitly to give the series more prominence? ISTR reading that somewhere.
Lena Headey was by far more prominent than Peter Dinklage prior to GoT; aren’t some of the character actors somewhat prominent in their niche though; Iain Glen, Julian Glover, Ian McElhinney, etc… ?
That’s what baffles me about “Rome”; not a big-named cast, and it doesn’t seem to have been filmed anywhere more expensive than GoT, but apparently had much bigger budgets.
I don’t. I thought the last season had good ideas but overall kind of sucked.
I think if it had ended after the Myrtle Beach season, it would have been tops.
The above quoted article mentions that Rome had a five acre set and implies that this was rather extravagantly sized. They might have spent more on costuming both because CG touch-ups weren’t quite there yet and an attempt at historic realism (versus generic fantasy). Overall CG is just better now which would help.
Of course, the answer might have been as simple as someone signed off on $100mil for the season in 2005 so Rome found ways to spend it. HBO could have been more gun shy about costs so gave GoT $6mil per episode and they’ve made due.
From interviews, I think this is part of it. HBO certainly doesn’t write them a blank check. They fight for every dollar they spend on the show, and sometimes have to work around the constraints. HBO was willing to spend more on Rome.
They didn’t quit, they were canned due to bad ratings. They certainly never had time for the show to diminish, what being still in the first season. If that counted any other single season show that didn’t absolutely suck would fit here.
I vote for Carnivale… they had 3 more seasons planned, but refused to cut their show’s budget, resulting in HBO pulling the plug. There may be a movie in the works.
Gilligan’s Island
Although they were considering having the castaways be rescued and switch to just having the Skipper and Gilligan take different people out every episode.
Yes! I came in here specifically to mention Freaks and Geeks. Well, that and My So-Called Life.
I don’t know about that. Dead Like Me started off strong, but it went downhill after Bryan Fuller left. The show went on much longer than it should have, IMHO.
I don’t think being canceled is the same as quitting when you’re ahead.