What multi season TV series had a good arc?

[andrewducker]

I'm primarily looking for series that had an arc plot which started at the beginning, crossed between seasons, and came to an ending which took in the whole run of the show and brought it to a coherent close, intended since the beginning, which made narrative sense and was emotionally satisfying.

I'm not asking for perfection here. Happy to include something like Babylon 5 (had an intended arc plot from the beginning, was derailed by the studio, and half of season 5 was a mess, but still worked overall, and had the ending it started out towards).

I'm just curious what other examples there are. Far more TV seems to consist of lots of exciting set-up, but with the writers later admitting they didn't actually know where they were going. I still enjoyed Battlestar Galactica, but it definitely suffered from this. Lost was the epitome of this, and nobody at all seems to have enjoyed its ending.

A better model for most TV seems to be a season arc. Where you've dealt with your Big Bad at the end of the season, but left things open for future ones. Buffy excelled at that.

In any case, the only things I can think of recently that fit this mould are the She-Ra reboot and Steven Universe. And going back fifteen years there's Avatar: The Last Airbender. All of which were animated kid's shows.

I hear Breaking Bad did pay off at the end, with what the creators had been aiming for since the beginning. What else did?

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

How I Met Your Mother had a ten year run working towards a more or less defined end point.

[andrewducker]

Was there an actual arc plot worked out in advance?

I mean there's definitely a beginning and an end, but is the middle more than a bunch of fun moments with no structure to them?

[danieldwilliam]

I think the depends on how much structure you require in order to meet your criteria.

I don't think each episode was planned in advance from the begining but I think the general scope and theme of the story in the middle was understood. Ted will have a series of relationships that develop him in to being ready and able to be in a relationship with the Mother. We will constrast this with Marshall and Lily and with Barney and the whole of New York's female population.

None of the specific incidents in the middle are necessary for the story to make sense. It doesn't really matter if Lily goes off to Italy or goes off to Australia or doesn't go off at all so long as she and Marshall have some tension about how to balance their own vocations with a family.

So I don't know.

[andrewducker]

Definitely a grey area.

(Also, did Ted actually develop at all???)

[danieldwilliam]

I think he definately did develop.

I'd need to watch it back or crib off someone who wrote about to remind myself how much.

But he definately worked out a) he could not have it all, b) what things were important to him c) what things he would compromise about. Also, how to be actual friends with Robyn.

[swampers]

Not even a little.

But it's worth watching with the idea that Ted is actually the villain of the piece...

[momentsmusicaux]

Can it be adapted from books? Because The Expanse, if they adapt all the books.

[andrewducker]

If they do, and it all works, then sure!

[drplokta]

But you don’t know that the Expanse books have a coherent close (unless you’re Daniel Abraham or Ty Franck posting under a pseudonym), since the last one has yet to be published, and so you can’t know that the TV series based on them will do so.

[andrewducker]

Ah, I'd assumed they did before I replied!

[drplokta]

Game of Thrones comes close. At the very least, it was always their intention to fulfil your criteria.

[andrewducker]

True. One can argue about the quality of the ending, but it's definitely a single story told across multiple seasons, coming to an intended ending.

[wildeabandon]

The Good Place?

Going back a while, The West Wing, and Six Feet Under.

I don't know if any of those actually was plotted from the beginning, but they were all satisfying in their resolution.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes! The Good Place counts. Assuming that they intended to work towards some kind of ending like that over time since the beginning. It certainly works as a coherent whole.

[cosmolinguist]

I came here to say The Good Place. I know early on Michael Schur was saying they were getting tons of suggestions and ideas and he was like thanks everybody but we got this. It seems very tightly planned and it paid off so satisfyingly.

[theandrewhickey]

The West Wing definitely *wasn't* plotted from the beginning, to the extent that Aaron Sorkin, who had been in total control for the first four seasons, had no involvement for the last three.

[wildeabandon]

That actually fits, now I think about it, in that there were definitely two sub-arcs, but they still felt coherent, at least to me.

[i_kender]

I second Breaking Bad for sticking the landing, that show ended really well.

Shows with a narrative arc, thankfully, are much more common nowadays then even 10 or 20 years ago - TV studios used to hate them with a passion, because they relied on, you know, an audience sticking around for the long haul, rather than just stepping in and out for the 'story (or monster) of the week', and they messed up syndication/repeats. But it's still more common to have a season arc, rather than a multi-season or series arc.

And of course, another major complicating factor for TV showrunners is that they often don't know, when starting out with a new show, how long they will get to run for. It's down to ratings. It's hard to plan for your satisfying ending when you don't know if you have just one or two seasons to get it done, or 3, or 5, or 8... and you either have to stretch out the middle bits, or keep adding characters, plot points, segues and complications (this is partly what killed Lost's later seasons so much, although I can think of other examples, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, The Sopranos etc...), or change direction entirely, and the show ends up going down a completely different road by its end. Like Angel or Farscape.

Having said all that, I will get round to listing a few examples that did do well with full arcs. Hopefully some of these may have been ones you've missed, and would be interested in checking out.

- Fringe
- Person of Interest
- The Americans (which I confess I haven't watched, but friends recommend strongly as a long-form show)
- and speaking of Avatar, I'm currently enjoying season 3 of The Dragon Prince from the same people, which has just been confirmed for a full run of 7 seasons.

That's all I've got off the top of my head. It is weird though, isn't it, how so many shows seem to be making it up as they go along? Even when they find a satisfying ending, a lot of the time I suspect they've pulled it into existence out of thin air rather than having it all planned out since Day One. But maybe that's just the nature of the medium, eh? Ratings, network execs, public screening polls... making it up on the fly.

(not to mention having writing teams or writers rooms, rather than a singular writer)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I really enjoyed the first ⅔ of a season of Revenge, and you could actually see the moment where they'd been told they had a second season, as they broke a character's character to stretch things out. Such a shame.

[helen_keeble]

I was about to say that The Dragon Prince should meet these criteria now that it’s been confirmed for all seven seasons; the creators were vocal from the beginning that they had a seven season story arc planned.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the examples here are animated shows. Animation by its nature requires years of planning and execution, and doesn’t lend itself to improv/whim like live action can. It’s also more resilient to some of the pitfalls of long running live action shows (actors getting bored and exercising get out clauses, or falling out with show runners and getting killed off).

I gather that a lot of KDrama shows are specifically written as long, complete stories told over a set number of seasons.

[i_kender]

That's a good point about animation.

[penta]

I don't know how well Person of Interest fits. As I recall, the story started out with one intent, but then Snowden happened, and suddenly what was intended to be sci-fi became pretty much facts published in the newspaper, and thus they had to reorient the series a lot.

[i_kender]

Ah, really? I didn't know that. Fair enough.

I always thought of Person of Interest like Batman fanfic. Only Batman was split into two characters - one was the genius, but physically weak (who builds the AI) and the other was tough but broken and looking for a moral compass, a war to believe in.

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Is that true? It's possible, but it's pretty clear that the showrunner is pretty obsessed with the themes in PoI, and let's get real: it is totally science fiction, becoming steadily moreso as it goes along. (Indeed, it feels to me like they were originally being strongarmed by the network into a procedural mode, and then the handcuffs were gradually loosened, allowing the arc to shine through.)

So Person of Interest certainly feels like it fits here, although I can't say for sure that that's true...

[nickbarlow]

You can make an argument that Breaking Bad isn't fitting with the original intent as the initial plan was for one of the core characters to die in the first season, but stayed alive because it was cut short because of the writers' strike. But that would be a quibble rather than a genuine objection, and I think any TV story of more than one season is going to end up with some course correction on the way.

It lost focus during the final season, but I think Orphan Black wrapped itself up well in the end. I'm not sure Michael Schur knew where The Good Place was going from the start, but from the start of S2 it's clearly ending towards an ending like that.

[theandrewhickey]

I'm absolutely certain Schur had a fairly clear idea that the Good Place was going to end the way it did, at least in broad outlines, from the very first episode.

[problemsdog]

Came here to say Orphan Black. I thought it tied together beautifully (and is just superb throughout).

[soon_lee]

That's a good example!

[gingicat]

I think that while Leverage and The Librarians mainly had season-based arcs, they absolutely developed each season from the previous season rather than being standalone.

It looks like Star Trek: Picard is intended that way, but I don't know if they'll get more seasons.

[ironymaiden]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had a planned arc and they stuck the landing.
Jane the Virgin also had a continuous arc and an endgame. Like The Good Place, it had numbered episodes.

(I recommend both of these.)

[i_kender]

I will second Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which is hilarious and very clever.

[jducoeur]

Oh, yes -- another second for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which turns out to have a much stronger arc (and turns out to be a somewhat more serious show) than it looks like at first glance. I thought it was brilliant.

[angelofthenorth]

I liked y Gwyll/ hinterland for its three season arc

[ljgeoff]

I'm liking Mindhunter (netflix) if that's something you'd like. I also second The Expanse. Just started watching Star Trek Discovery and liking it (I watch TV very slowly and am only on season1, ep 3); was kinda meh about Picard, but to be fair, it was very trekky, and maybe I'm just into more nuanced scripts these days.

[kmusser]

I'll add another animated series to your list, the Trollhunters/3Below/Wizards Tales of Arcadia on Netflix - not complete yet, but the final season drops next month and it appears to following the intended arc envisioned from the beginning. Definitely recommended.

[matgb]

To an extent, Stargate SG1 managed this, twice, sorta, because the first arc was meant to end the show then it got recomissioned so they had to create a new threat, which they also covered quite well.

Atlantis got an ending, but it wasn't the original plan because it got cancelled in favour of Universe, which bombed because it wasn't a Stargate show so no one watched it :-(

Fringe did good, but that's been mentioned already.

Also? I lost my copy of that icon in a move years back, have yoinked it back, it's animated slightly too fast but it still works.

[jducoeur]

While I'm quite a fan of both SG1 and Atlantis, I'm skeptical that either really had a pre-planned arc per se. They both had ongoing storylines and solid endings, but those endings didn't feel like they were carefully designed over multiple seasons. (Especially for SG1, where the main series very much ended with Season 8, and then they introduced a whole new storyline for the last two seasons and the movies.)

I think both series fit well into the "season-long arc" category (very similarly to Buffy), but I don't think they're really "series-long arc" in the sense that Andrew is asking about here...

[matgb]

Yeah, that's pretty much my "to an extent", I think the first 6 seasons sort of followed a planned arc if you can call "find out what's going on, then defeat the Go'ald" a planned arc, and once that was established as the plan they built up to it fairly well over the seasons even if the first couple were very much Adventures! In! Space! with a background plot.

Atlantis I don't think had a huge arc, and definitely didn't get whatever they had planned, but I think what they really planned was ongoing real adventures in space without the complications of it's meant to be a secret on Earth that SG1 suffered from

So yeah, you're right, but I think SG1 ended up with a decent overal plot, and then the second one wasn't terrible

[matgb]

My brain just kicked in and remembered a show I loved that did this.

Killjoys.

Cheap, pulpy entertainment with a 5 year alien invasion arc. Note I'm not saying it was good telly, but it was fun and very pretty.

[jack]

I've asked this before and got similar amount of replies. I'm generally grateful we've got as many as we do, the number of shows strong across multiple seasons is not that large to begin with.

Although I feel like more shows could plan for this, something like, have a fairly self-contained season 1, but have a hook that can introduce a larger threat in S2 if S1 ends looking promising. And then if they get a S2, plan a S2/S3/S4 arc with a general outline of "S2: face subsiduary threat, S3: gather strength and clear up side threats; S4: build to big climax"

[heron61]

The Good Place managed this remarkably well, and Killjoys did a reasonable job of this. My favorite almost case for this is still Fringe - Seasons 2 & 3 were one of the single best unified plot arcs I've ever seen, and most of Season 4 kept this up, but the show failed badly with the end of Season 4 and all of Season 5.

[calimac]

I haven't watched more than bits and pieces of any of these shows (except Orphan Black, which I have very mixed feelings about), but the premise question reminds me of some cruddy show of which I watched only the premiere some years ago. It hooks up two characters as partners in crimefighting and then says there's some supernatural prophecy which says they'll partner in this for seven years, and I was thinking, "Seven years? That's about the average lifespan of a successful TV drama. What a coincidence!"

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Jane the Virgin! To be fair, it followed the premise of another telenovela (Juana la Virgen), but the way the series concluded after 5 seasons was very much tied up in how it began and presented itself from episode 1. The entire show is one very very long buildup to the finale, with lots of twists and turns along the way.

[soon_lee]

Avatar: The Last Airbender.

(In particular the Zuko character arc.)

[jducoeur]

Two time-travel examples:

Continuum is my favorite time-travel story ever, and it worked hard to make logical sense. (It mostly succeeded.) On long-term arc, let's put it this way -- in the middle of season 2, I concluded "There is only one way this story can possibly end that actually works both logically and as a story", and sure enough: the final scene was almost precisely what I expected it to be. The fact that that was possible speaks to how well-designed the arc was.

I know that many details got adjusted along the way: it actually ran 3.5 seasons, but from the pacing I figured they probably intended 7, and have heard rumors that they had planned 10. Towards the end it is notably rushed, similar to B5 season 4 (there is one storyline that I think was intended to cover an entire season, that wound up turning into ten minutes of exposition). But the story works: the core arc does get resolved in a satisfying way, and it all hangs together decently well.

Similarly, I just finished Dark on Netflix. This is an insanely intricate time-travel story, perhaps an order of magnitude moreso than Continuum. Again, I'm fairly sure that it got cut short: from the pacing of Season 3, I'm pretty sure that they had intended 5 total. And it gets somewhat mystical towards the end. But it's pretty clear that it was tightly planned from the beginning, with lots of stuff that doesn't even make sense until a season or two later, and sticks a decently solid (if rushed) ending. Not as strong a recommendation as Continuum, but still fascinating, if often a tad bleak.

[jducoeur]

Additional thoughts, based on a quick skim of my reviews:

Preacher was adapted from the comic book, and at least vaguely follows its arc. Very much a matter of taste, but I think it qualifies.

Gotham arguably qualifies: it was always clear where the story was going (covering Bruce Wayne's life from the death of his parents to the beginning of Batman per se), although I think they were making up most of the details as they went along. Surprisingly good series, if and only if you like grand guignol, and are willing to go with the fact that it is arguably more about the villains than the heroes. (And that Bruce is not in any way the lead.)

I'm pretty sure that Sense8 -- Netflix, from JMS and Lana Wachowski -- was pre-planned. As so often for JMS, it got cut short, but they gave them enough room to tie the story together in what I think was at least vaguely the originally intended form.

That reminds me of Jeremiah, yet another JMS story that got somewhat short. Two seasons, and I'm fairly sure this wound up being a variation of the story he originally intended to tell in Crusade, despite looking very different on the surface. I'm pretty sure it went where it was intended to go.

Buffy is one of the classics of season-long arc; another Joss Whedon story, Dollhouse, may well be a series-long one. Hard to be certain, but it very much has a complete storyline that builds to a rather brutal ending -- I suspect that was planned, but dunno.

And of course, there are zillions of single-season minis out there with strong coherent arcs, Watchmen probably the most notable recent example. But I don't think that's quite what you're asking about.

[matgb]

Was reminded of this by a joke I saw on Twitter. Tenko

Starts with capture of Singapore and internment of civilians, moves on to them getting to know each other, ends with liberation and return to Singapore

Haven't watched it for decades, but people speak very highly of it, and not just Doctor Who fans of a Certain Age