Other than the finale, I’m having difficulty thinking of a bad episode of Seinfeld.
I think that Modern Family is very consistently high-quality. Of course, I haven’t seen many of the later episodes, mostly the first three or four seasons.
Seasons 3-8 of the Simpsons were freaking incredible. It’s still a very good show, but during those years the writers were freakily hot. On fire. And in a good way.
Also, the Emma Peel eps of The Avengers were consistently sharp, funny takeoffs on the spy genre. They set a high mark.
Never in a million years would that have come to mind for me, but I think it’s a perfect answer.
Also: The Wire.
My wife and I just finished binge-watching WKRP In Cincinnati, and it’s even better than I remembered it. Four seasons, and I can’t think of a single bad episode.
I love Archer but, man, it had some dogs of an episode (hell, I’d say the entire Vice season). Same with It’s Always Sunny. I find that really hit and miss lately. I probably agree with Arrested Development–there’s not really a single episode I didn’t enjoy, but there were about two or three episodes in the second season that were a bit shaky, especially the Uncle Jack episode. I definitely agree with Peep Show.
Offhand, I also don’t remember many bad episodes of Mary Tyler Moore or The Bob Newhart Show.
Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier almost always made me laugh.
Law and Order:Criminal Intent for me
IT Crowd is amazingly consistently great. Peep Show also.
Cheers was consistently good.
Cagney and Lacey has not aged well, but when it was new, it was quite original. There was an episode where Lacey had to talk her Lt. into taking a date rape case seriously there was another where a woman was under suspicion of murdering her father, and C&L were stymied for a motive until they began to suspect he had molested her, and it turned out that he was about to be remarried, to a woman with two young daughters. They also made frequent visits to the police lab, and there was plenty of CSI-type stuff involved in thre detective work-- again, all very dated now. It’s fortunate the acting is so good, because it keeps the show watchable.
I have not seen* Lou Grant in years, but I seem to remember it was both original, and tightly plotted, not to mention well-acted. Again, it may not have aged well, but as far as satisfying the S:N ratio, I think it does. It was quite original in presenting “slice of life” stories, which confused some viewers, who just saw the plots as unresolved, but eventually people got it. Sometimes you were plopped down in a story without much background information, and had to infer it from context, and then the episode was over, but there were still lingering questions.
*I remember one episode where the office computerized, and everyone had a “DVT” or something on their desk (digital video terminal, I guess), hooked directly to the mainframe, and they were all supposed to use it, and no one had access to anything that would allow them to backup on floppy disks. And, of course, no one is saving as they go; they write a whole story and then save once, because there’s no training on how to use the computer. Naturally, it fails during a power outage, and everyone loses the story they are working on, except the one Luddite who was insisting on still using a typewriter. But every show from about 1968-1982 had an episode where a computer screws up and causes some huge problem.
Kim Possible
Daria
What can I say? I have a thing for quippy, animated high school girls.
I’d agree with Daria but Kim Possible was dragging things out at the end.
Person of Interest is strong all the way through. I have some favorites (“God Mode,” “/,” “If/Then/Else,” “Relevance”) but I can’t think of any I’d avoid re-watching. Impressive since Finch annoys me no end.
Fawlty Towers, though, again, it’s a series of few episodes.
This is an excellent example. Every episode is gut-busting funny.
Practically every British mini-series that was on Masterpiece Theater, except I don’t know if the ones based on novels count. But definitely the original ones, like Upstairs, Downstairs, and The Duchess of Duke Street.
Oh, and Absolutely Fabulous. It’s tricky, because repeating phrases a lot is one of Jennifer Saunders shticks, but it works, and it doesn’t constitute “noise” in that particular case.
In theater, there’s something called “throwaway dialogue,” which means that the semantic content is unimportant: the point is how either the delivery, the accompanying business, or how the upstage/downstage (or stage left/right) contrast plays out, and Ab Fab has a lot of throwaway dialogue, but that isn’t the same thing as noise.
Just finished bingeing on The Wire and every episode was excellent, I binged on The Sopranos back in 2010 and couldn’t watch any other series for six full months, Yes, Prime Minister is brilliantly written and, according to those in the know, the most realistic portrayal of life in the government of the UK, Spaced is excellent all of the way through but much too short, Ab Fab is another favourite, also The Office (British) was so innovative, Blackadder was achingly good, Men Behaving Badly lots of fun, as was Breaking Bad, Frasier, and Fargo was excellent (although I haven’t seen the second series yet).
The second season of Fargo was also good all the way through. I personally didn’t think it was quite as good as the first, but that still leaves a lot of room for greatness.
That’s a joke, right?
The Big Bang Theory can still be funny these days, but some episodes aren’t and too many use annoying plotlines. It’s not consistent at all.
Survivor is the opposite of consistent, but in a strange way the fact that when it’s bad it’s so bad is a good thing, because that way you appreciate it more when it’s good and it ratchets up the tension when people are about to make a (stupid) decision.
I think Silicon Valley might be the only show I’ve ever seen where there isn’t a single episode I don’t love. Admittedly, it’s only two short seasons in, but still. Very, very good.
Peep Show also has an incredibly high signal to noise ratio, and also has the extremely rare distinction for a sitcom of having some absolutely fantastic episodes in its last season.