8 Once Great TV Shows That Lasted Too Long

Few TV shows can keep up the quality over an extended runtime. While they might start at the top of their game, a few seasons later the bar starts to drop and before you know it your favourite series has become a shadow of its once great self. A famous example is Happy Days, from which the phrase ‘jump the shark’ originates. By its fifth season, the show had grown so outlandish that the Fonz comically jumped over a shark while skiing. Since then, the term has come to signify a moment where a TV show took an irreparable turn for the worse. But what other series that were once great eventually just became grating? From Smallville to The Simpsons, read on for 8 TV series that sadly didn’t think to quit while they were still ahead. 8) The Big Bang Theory The Big Bang Theory is arguably the biggest comedy hit of the last ten years, as the sitcom about a bunch of science geeks has gained worldwide popularity. It was also a reliably funny show, with the obvious highlight being Jim Parson’s great performance as the hilariously anti-social Sheldon. However, in recent seasons the show has really lost its groove. While it was in many ways a good idea to increase the female cast beyond only Penny, pairing all of the characters off took away from the original hook of the series. In particular, the Sheldon and Amy romance is often a lot of fun but it 's dampened what made Sheldon such a terrific comedy character to start with. Now coming to its tenth season, TBBT has little to do but recycle the same jokes and endlessly break up and reunite its various couples until it's given the chop. 7) Heroes Ordinarily, four seasons would be a solid length for a show to reach without running itself into the ground. Unfortunately, Heroes is an exception as it burnt itself out after just one season. In short, season one was a terrific piece of fairly grounded superhero drama with a well-told epic storyline that unfolded across the 23-episode run. Its tagline ‘save the cheerleader, save the world’ entered into pop-culture and it gave us great characters like Zachary Quinto’s villainous Sylar. After that, the show totally failed to live up to the hype the first season generated and instantly stumbled, never to get back up again. Overly elaborate plotlines and ridiculous twists came thick and fast, to the extent that even its most ardent fans had deserted it by the end of its fourth season. The spinoff, Heroes Reborn turned out to be even more forgettable and, just as Heroes should have done, finished after just one season. 6) Smallville Prequel shows are often at a disadvantage as the audience already knows how it will end. As such, it can be difficult to know when to call it quits. This is certainly the case with Smallville, which basically ran five whole seasons too long. Beginning with a teenage Clark Kent learning how to deal with his Kryptonian powers, Smallville was originally a fun retelling of the Superman story, just without the tights and flights. After season five, just about everything was in place for Clark to step up and become Superman. The show could have bowed out gracefully and it would have been gone down as a show that stuck to its original premise. Unfortunately, Smallville ended up struggling on for ten seasons, introducing more and more elements from DC mythology to the extent that it was just plain stupid that Clark hadn’t suited up yet. 5) The Office (U.S) You shouldn’t, but it's hard to resist comparing the original British The Office and its US counterpart. While Ricky Gervais’ creation was perfectly formed at a tiny 14 episodes, the version that starred Steve Carrell ran on to an enormous 201 episodes. While the first six seasons were some of the best TV comedy out there, the show lost a lot of its greatness when the tentpoles of the series started to change. Once Jim and Pam got together, for example, the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ element that had driven the show disappeared. Likewise, when Carell stepped down from the role of Michael Scott, it lost the linchpin that was holding it together. To be fair to The Office, it had a good ending, as it wrapped up various plot threads and character arcs when it finally concluded after nine seasons. It just wasn’t the show it used to be. 4) The X-Files Another show that suffered once it lost one of its leads is The X-Files. The landmark series is rightly remembered as hugely influential in the rise of sci-fi and fantasy shows over the last two decades, but you have to admit that it went on for too long. Far too long. Any fan will tell you that the heart of the show is the chemistry between David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully. It spelled doom for the show, then, when Duchovny bowed out after season seven. Instead, Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick was brought on as Scully’s new partner and the hunt for Mulder became the new big mystery. On the whole, it wasn’t a bad way to deal with the actor’s loss, but there was no real need for it to continue. 3) Dexter At one time, Dexter was a must-watch show – a fascinating exploration of a killer which just kept getting stronger and stronger. The show’s apex came in the terrific season four which introduced Dexter’s nemesis, John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer. Sadly, after Dexter pulled out all the stops to make that season so good, it just couldn’t live up to the high standard it had set for itself after that. Instead of bowing out at the top of its game, the show got further and further away from its previous self until it reached its eighth and final season. The finale, with its now infamous reveal that Dexter became a lumberjack, left fans fuming. Thanks to the downturn in the series, Dexter is remembered as a show that went off the rails rather than for its original brilliance. 2) How I Met Your Mother By its eighth season, How I Met Your Mother was certainly past its prime, but not quite to the extent of some of the other shows on this list. What damned the series, however, was its disastrous ninth and final season. Making all 24 episodes of the run take place over Barney and Robin’s wedding weekend meant the plots and laughs were stretched to breaking point. Plus, the whole thing was rendered completely pointless when their relationship was dissolved come the finale. The big smack in the face for long-term fans, though, was Ted ending up with Robin, a pairing the show had grown out of seasons back. If this had happened after a shorter run, maybe we would have bought it. But after watching the characters grow after so long, it was a pretty poor way to go out. 1) The Simpsons There's no denying that The Simpsons in the 1990s was one of the most significant and timeless shows in TV history. If it had finished around the turn of the millennium, it would have preserved the amazingly high hit ratio of the show. Unfortunately, The Simpsons is still going sixteen years later and it jumped the shark many years back. Unlike previously mentioned series, there wasn’t really one big decision that caused a downturn in the series’ fortunes. Rather, it was just the show’s ridiculously long life span that dulled the sharp wit and heart of the first few seasons. Thankfully, the heights of its early years are still enough to keep the show fondly thought of by most people. Still, the series is a poor imitation of itself nowadays and has undoubtedly lasted far longer than it should have done.