I was just thinking about the famous quote from Community in which Abed predicted/hoped that a favorite TV show would make it to “six seasons and a movie”. He was referring to The Cape, which in reality only lasted ten episodes. The “six seasons and a movie” quote later became a slogan for Community fans hoping the series would last at least six seasons. It now has, although the sixth season was online only and as of yet there’s been no Community movie.
So what shows have made it to at least six seasons and a movie? I am interested in TV shows that had at least one film adaptation, not TV shows based on a pre-existing film. So MASH* for instance wouldn’t count, since that was a movie first. I’m also not counting made-for-TV movies or specials as movies; I’m looking for movies that were released in theaters.
The first two examples I could think of were Star Trek: The Next Generation (7 seasons, 4 movies) and The X-Files (9 seasons, 2 movies). There was also Mystery Science Theater 3000 (11 seasons, 1 movie). The only non-science fiction example that springs to mind is Glee (6 seasons, 1 concert movie), although there must be others.
Does it have to be in that order? “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” had a movie, then seven season. (And a comic book series that creator Whedon decried is “in canon.”) Does that count?
TV shows that had a pre-existing movie were specifically excluded from the OP.
How about movie adaptations that had a different cast? The Dukes of Hazzard ran for seven seasons, then had a movie with different actors than the ones on the TV show.
I was going to say The Twilight Zone, but it was only five seasons. Gilligan’s Island ran for 98 freaking episodes in three seasons, which translates to eight seasons in today’s TV, and then had three movies.
Spooks was a UK programme that was called MI-5 in its US run. It ran for ten series and then a movie was released earlier this year, called Spooks: The Greater Good.
That’s only if you consider the original series of The Twilight Zone, which itself had 156 episodes. The two revivals in the 1980s and 2002-2003 added four more seasons and 132 more episodes. I think Twilight Zone should count.
Get Smart - five seasons then The Nude Bomb, which only had Don Adams from the original.
Mission Impossible (7 seasons) then movie with new cast.
The Muppet Show, though that was only in its 4th season when The Muppet Movie was released.
Leaving off the 1967-70 revival starring Webb and Harry Morgan, and the mediocre Dan Aykroyd-Tom Hanks movie, it originally ran for eight seasons from 1951-59 and had a 1954 theatrical movie starring Webb and Ben Alexander.