If we’re talking consistency, then you can’t beat the Fox Network’s Lawless from 1997 starring Brian Bosworth. Only one episode aired.
Barney Miller is a favorite series but I have to agree with Skywatcher on this one. When the series began, they split the show with half being set around Barney Miller’s home life and the other half being set at his job. It became clear that the job half of the show was much better than the home half and the home scenes got reduced and then eliminated.
MY Favorite Martian
Yeah, because there have been amazingly clever/funny/brilliant shows that weren’t consistent.
Our whole family loved LOST. And a movie critic friend of mine said that the first season is one of the best in 21st century television. But it’s NOT consistent at all… the crash, the survivors beginning to build a community, the early mysteries? All very different from the later Ben Linus and the Others storyline, then the Hatch and Desmond and the Smoke Monster. Then all the flashbacks/flash-sideways/flash-forwards… all brilliant (until the last episode… :dubious: ). But INconsistent.
Breaking Bad was more consistent in that it was a pretty linear story arc (Walter to Heisenberg).
You can also have a show so consistent that it’s boring. Someone mentioned L&O (I call it Law And Too Much Order, because you know exactly what the formula is… obvious killer revealed at the 35 minute mark? Nope, real killer unmasked at the 50th minute). And a lot of classic sitcoms were “consistent”, but we call that formulaic now.
I was young enough that most of the MASH I saw went over my head. Was an episode where Alda had more control better, or worse?
I remember in Petrocelli, there was only one episode wherein his client was really guilty, and he found out only during cross-examination.
I don’t think I ever saw a bad episode of *NCIS *or House.
Many people didn’t see it because it wasn’t on a major network and ran for only two seasons, but I’ll suggest A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery, starring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin. Every aspect of this series (the acting, the writing, the direction, the set design, the costumes, etc.) was superb, and remained so for the entire run of the series.
Unfortunately it cost more than a million dollars per episode to produce, and after two years A&E decided a more profitable choice would be to air programming such as Dog the Bounty Hunter instead.
The Expanse hits the ground running.
Brooklyn 99 for me.
The already mentioned Barney Miller and Dick Van Dyke show are probably my two favorite sitcoms, so I’ll mention something else, something more current:
Better Call Saul.
(btw, new season starts next week)
mmm
Blackadder.
Sure there are lot of people critical of the first series, and it is a completely different formula, but they are wrong to say so. It is consistently great from beginning to end.
In my opinion, the last season of The Shield and the first season of Breaking Bad were noticeably less consistent in terms of quality.
Fawlty Towers. There were only 12 episodes but they were consistently hilarious.
Married with Children is very consistent.
Lots of great episodes. Some good and others in the middle. I don’t recall any really bad ones.
There isn’t an episode that I immediately recognize and turn off.
That other sitcom with Ed O’Neil ain’t bad, either (Modern Family).
Which brings up one way to answer this question: What TV series do you watch every episode of, even when you’ve seen it a dozen times and know what’s going to happen?
We do the rabbit ears thing (ask your grandma, kid), and end up watching vintage TV shows on a regular basis.
The Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke, orig. Bob Newhart show. And earlier ones like Burns & Allen, Jack Benny… oh, and Dobie Gillis! We often say “Oh, I’ve seen this one!”, but it’s like meeting up with an old friend – we’d never change the channel.
Same with Seinfeld (but I’ll admit, it’s a wildly INconsistent show)…
Just this weekend we noticed how many Seinfeld references our Millenial kids made. Neither of them have TVs, and are too cynical for most sitcoms. Sullen Tattoo Kid perked up: “Yeah, I’ve picked up every season on DVD, watch ‘em on my laptop. They really hold up, y’know. Almost nothin’ that can’t be related to a Seinfeld situation.”
Start to finish, Breaking Bad was the most consistently high-quality TV I’ve ever seen, with The Sopranos and The Wire very very close behind.
Note, I think the Wire had a few weaker seasons, but overall quality was outstanding all the way through. BB and Sopranos, it’s hard to even pinpoint a weak episode let alone a weak season.
My picks:
House
Breaking Bad
Shameless
Longmire
Ozark
Andy Griffith
Psych (I didn’t know this show existed until a few months ago. I’m in season 4 right now (Amazon Prime). Each episode has numerous lines that make me laugh out loud)
Any episode of Andy Griffith that features Helen Crump sucks.
Same with Dick Van Dyke and Ritchie.
Otherwise, all systems go…
The general consensus is worse. But, as with all things, YMMV. I’m sure Alda thought they were the best! 
As Alda got more control, he shaped the direction of his character. And that was the problem. IMO, Aldo viewed Hawkeye as the eye of sanity in a crazy world. If there were conflicting opinions on something, especially political opinions, Hawkeye’s was always the correct one. He was the smartest, most moral-est person in the room, if not the war.
But to us on the outside, he came across as a sanctimonious prig. Thinking one’s opinions are the only valid ones only works if they are, in fact, correct (Holmes in at least Elementary, and even then, he can be insufferable).
Hawkeye’s current equivalents would be Harry Bosch (in the books even more than the show) and Brenda Leigh Johnson in The Closer. Whatever they do is the only right thing to do, even if last week the exact opposite was the only right thing to do. If you can’t see that, then you are on the character’s shit list.
Take the example I gave. Hawkeye presents himself as superior morally to everyone else. He will do no harm, to any living thing. He pointedly won’t carry a gun, even if he never would shoot anyone. But in those two similar episodes, Hawkeye removed a healthy appendix from two different officers, just to keep them from doing what he perceived as harm. “The greater good” was his justification. Well, Hawkeye, you can justify quite a lot in the name of “the greater good”.