Whilst we wish our favourite TV shows could go on forever, all shows have an expiry date, after which they often decline in quality if they don’t come to an end. 

Popular TV shows tend to go on for multiple seasons, and Pretty Little Liars was no exception, eventually spanning 7 seasons before coming to an end in 2017. The show revolved around four teenage girls, seeking to discover the identity of the mysterious ‘A’, who was tormenting them via text message by threatening to expose their darkest secrets. Therefore, you’d expect the show to end after season 2 when ‘A’ was revealed. However, Pretty Little Liars continued, with another ‘A’ being revealed, as well as the main characters moving away for college, mid-way through season 6, marking a natural stopping point. The show continued for 2 more years, as a third ‘A’ was introduced after a five-year time jump. Pretty Little Liars missed multiple natural stopping points, and the final season felt like a desperate attempt to cling onto the success of the previous seasons.

Gilmore Girls is perhaps another show which struggled to live up to its previous seasons, with the revival in 2016 falling flat. Originally airing for 7 seasons between 2000 and 2007, the final season was not written by the original creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Thus, the revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was an opportunity for the creators of the show to end the show how they had planned to. Despite this, the revival felt awkward, with nostalgic references shoe-horned in, making us all too aware of the nine-year break. 

Longer running shows face similar problems. Doctor Who, which first aired in 1963, has varied in popularity over the years. Boasting 858 episodes to date, it is undoubtedly difficult to continually capture the popularity of earlier series, particularly considering how the main characters regularly change. In certain periods in the 1960s and 70s, the show would regularly draw in audiences of between 9 and 14 million, and when the show was revived in 2005, the first episode, ‘Rose’, had an average audience of 10.81 million. However, according to The Sun, the show is currently seeing some of the worst ratings in its almost 60-year history, with the recent New Year’s Day special drawing in a low of 4.88 million viewers. 

Few shows can boast decades-long success, though soaps such as Coronation Street have remained a staple of British weeknight television. Of course, having run for 60 years, and currently airing 6 episodes a week, it is unsurprising that Coronation Street has also struggled to avoid being repetitive and keep viewers entertained. In the 1980s, the show saw highs of 26 million viewers, compared to just 6 million in 2018. Although it is worth considering that there is more entertainment choice now than compared to the 1980s, a loss of 20 million viewers might suggest that the end is in sight for long-running soaps.

Of course, there are some shows which ended at the right time, before they saw a decline in quality, thus keeping ratings high. In 2004, 51 million tuned in to watch the finale of long-running sitcom Friends. It is perhaps the fact that the show ended in its prime which contributed to its continued success.

As long as audiences are watching and TV networks are making money, shows will continue, but ultimately all shows have an expiry date and shows that end in their prime may experience continued success well after they have ended.

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