Series Longevity Quotes

I think if you have a series for a long time, it's in some ways like being in a play with a long run - in that the character stays the same - and so you are constantly posed with the challenge of making it interesting and unique week after week, year after year.

I don't know how people will remember this series [of the Twilight Saga] at all. It's crazy how intense people are.

Inevitably any series that goes on too long will reach a point where it starts struggling for ideas, so I've always been really aware of getting out while the going's good.

The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.

No not at all... it is rare for shows to make it as long as Once and Again... It was a pretty good run.

Every Bond is different and every generation needs a different Bond and it's been able to move with the times.

The quality I appreciated most about Grafton was her loyalty. She stuck with 'Kinsey Millhone' and the alphabet series conceit for her entire career but did not allow herself to stagnate as a writer. Kinsey's first-person narrative gradually made room for other, third-person perspectives.

We were all expecting to finish [Downton Abbey] after Series 1, actually. And then, it got extended to Series 3, and that's when two of our much loved and much missed friends left. And then, it was going to be done with Series 5, but Julian Fellowes said, "I'd like to do one more." So it's been a series of extensions, rather than wondering how much longer we can go on for.

TV is designed to keep characters in place for years on end. The best example is 'M*A*S*H:' You have a three-year police action in Korea, and they stretched that out to eleven seasons. It was a great show, but when you think about it, a weird unreality overtakes a television series. You see the actors age, and yet the characters don't.

When a series is doing well, it's very tempting to keep writing it, even when the creative well is drying up. It's tempting because that's where the money is. I've had to be very careful; as soon as I think I'm getting close to that dry well, I wrap the series up. I don't want to just keep writing something because it sells.

In terms of characters I wish I had created - just because I haven't dealt with anything like them - I'm really impressed by characters who can endure over time, whether that be a long series run like a Harry Bosch, or a character who endures over generations and continues to please readers: Sherlock Holmes.

I had been on four other series that never lasted more than a year and a half. I'd done fine, so you start to wonder, 'Will I ever be one of those lucky actors who get to be part of something lasting?'

The only reason to do a television series is to make it successful. And if it is successful, that's a six or seven year commitment.

It's not about creating 22 episodes indefinitely for as long as you can do.

Unfortunately for the 'Tomorrow' series, I feel that for the actors that were in the first film, maybe our commitment to it is done.

People who come to 'The Country House' are like, 'You're on 'The Good Wife' now.' But I've been on since the second season! I feel that the interest in the children in that series is almost tangential.

The character and the actor in a long-running series slowly become one. I think there must be funny stories about actors who, in the pilot for a TV series, did some weird thing with their eyes, or some speech impediment or something, and the next thing you know, it's eight years later, and they're still doing that freaking gag.

Sustaining an audience with a web series is an impossible task.

The biggest risk with a series that goes on this long is that you'll get bored with the character.

The thing about women playing boys is that we're not going to age, and we're not going to go through puberty in the middle of a long-running series.

There have been some brilliant and very successful standalone books that work in themselves and also seem to refresh a series. Anyone who writes a series lives in fear of it becoming stale, so you do whatever you can to keep it fresh - although it does feel a bit nerve-racking to write outside of your comfort zone.

A lot of series tend to go on for one series too many, especially with comedies, and I think people say 'ooh, it's gone off, that.'

It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life.