Most TV shows take a couple of seasons to find their footing — just look atSeinfeldorParks and RecreationorBuffy the Vampire Slayer— butsome shows peaked in season 1. If a series has a stellar first season, likeTrue DetectiveorStranger Things, it can be tough for subsequent seasons to live up to it.
10Prison Break
As its title would suggest,Prison Breakstarted outas a show about a group of prisoners plotting to break out of jail. Michael Scofield got himself intentionally incarcerated in a maximum-security prison, with a blueprint tattooed all over his torso, in order to get his wrongfully convicted brother out of there. Season 1 told that story perfectly.
But at the end of season 1, the Fox River Eight successfully broke out of prison, so the story was complete.There was still a bit of juice left in the tank in season 2, as the escapees went on the runand the show briefly becameThe Fugitive, but then it devolved into a contrived conspiracy thriller.
9Heroes
Heroes’ debut season is one of the greatest seasons of television ever produced. It was a refreshing new take on the superhero genre that translated the storytelling format of comic books into episodic TV and stripped down the mythology to the bare essentials. When it premiered, it looked likeHeroescould be the nextLost.
As it went into season 2,Heroeshad a drastically slower pacethat made it feel much less vital and exciting. In season 3, it brought in a dreary, dour tone to keep up with the changing comic book movie landscape in a post-Nolan era, and it got so grim that it just wasn’t fun to watch anymore.
8The Last Of Us
The first season ofThe Last of Uswas a spot-on adaptation of the iconic video game. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey perfectly recapturedJoel and Ellie’s relationship— the emotional core of the story — and all the alterations to the source material, like the Bill and Frank episode, landed beautifully in this new medium.
Then, the second season misinterpreted the second game and took a steep nosedive —almost all the changes made it an inferior story. It erased the mystery around Abby’s motive and backstory by explaining it upfront, and worst of all, it turned Ellie into a petulant kid who only kills in self-defense and often forgets why she’s seeking revenge.
7Glee
The writers ofGleehad one season’s worth of story to tell, but their show was so hugely successful that the network didn’t just leave it there. They ended up stretching out the series to a whopping six seasons, by which point it had seriously run out of steam.
Season 1 has a delightfully dark sense of humor that would get toned down in the later seasons. That first season felt fresh, because it focused on the kids’ earnest naïveté, butGleewent downhill when it started giving more airtime to celebrity guest starsthan the characters that made audiences fall in love with the show in the first place.
6Killing Eve
Killing Eve’s cat-and-mouse chase between a cop and an assassin wasrefreshingly smart, original, and darkly hilarious in its first season. The second season was pretty strong, too. But in its third and fourth seasons, there was a massive drop-off in the show’s quality. Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh’s chemistry continued to shine, but the writing wasn’t as deep or incisive.
One of the problems is that the series didn’t have a consistent showrunner. Every season brought in a new head writer with a new vision. The stellar first season was produced underFleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the second one hadSaltburn’s Emerald Fennell at the helm, then season 3 was run by Suzanne Heathcote and season 4 was run by Laura Neal.
5Fargo
When a TV adaptation ofFargowas first announced, cinephiles were skeptical.Fargois one of the greatest movies ever made, and it has a very specific voice. But against all odds, Noah Hawley pulled it off. He recaptured the dark humor and quaint Midwestern-ness of the Coen brothers’ classic crime caper while telling a whole new story.
But since it became an anthology series and extended into multiple seasons,it’s become very hit-and-miss. The second and fifth seasons came close to living up to the first, but seasons 3 and 4 were a let-down that hurt the overall reputation of the show. EvenFargo’s strongest later seasonsdon’t hold a candle to that stellar season 1.
4The Handmaid’s Tale
In its first season,The Handmaid’s Talewas a pitch-perfect adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel. It brought her disturbing dystopian world to life with the appropriate bleakness and told Offred’s story with the same gravitas it had on the page. The season unfolded the mystery of this unsettling future perfectly, and captured the zeitgeist with its timely themes.
But then, it kept going beyond the source material and continued the story past its natural stopping point. The subsequent seasons felt very aimless and scattershot and unfocused. The writers delayed the exciting moments for far too long, andthe series devolved into torture porn. IfThe Handmaid’s Talehad just remained a miniseries, it would be remembered as an all-time classic.
3Westworld
WhenWestworldfirst premiered, it wassupposed to be HBO’s nextGame of Thrones-sized genre hit. It took Michael Crichton’s tale of a futuristic Wild West theme park full of robot cowboys and turned it into an existential study of technological hubris and sentient artificial intelligence, and it arrived as a breath of fresh air in its mind-blowing first season.
But the show had pretty much said everything it had to say through this very specific premise by the end of season 1. The series’ viewership and critical reception dropped off very quickly after that first season.Season 1 was befuddling in a clever way, but the later seasons were just plain befuddling, with inconsistent characterization and indecipherable storylines.
2Stranger Things
The Duffer brothersoriginally pitchedStranger Thingsas a limited series, with the potential to expand it into multiple seasons with an anthology format. The story of Mike, Eleven, et al was never supposed to extend beyond that first season. But it was such a blockbuster hit thatNetflix demanded a direct continuation of that story.
Season 1 is an untouchable masterpiece — a nostalgic throwback to Amblin classics that also feels totally fresh — but the subsequent seasons have been very hit-and-miss. Season 2 was okay, but season 3 was a massive let-down. Season 4 felt like a return to form, but it still didn’t come close to the greatness of season 1.
1True Detective
Nic Pizzolatto caught lightning in a bottle withTrue Detectiveseason 1. It charts a devilishly complex mystery story across dual timelines, through the fractured lives of two deeply flawed investigators played by the perfectly matched Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. When the series deservingly arrived as a hit in the ratings,HBO wanted Pizzolatto to catch lightning in a bottle again.
After meticulously crafting season 1 over several years, Pizzolatto was tasked with churning out a second season in a few short months. Thanks to this quick turnaround, season 2 feels rushed. The characters are thinly drawn, and the narrative is skin-deep. The subsequentseasons ofTrue Detectivehave been much stronger, but they’ve never reached the heights of season 1.
