It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.
When I was a kid growing up, there might be 10 shows on the air that had been on for ten seasons or eleven seasons. 'Gunsmoke' ran for over twenty years.
When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.
I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. 'Stargate Universe,' they were kind of secretive too a little bit about what they wanted to do, but I kind of liked working this way. I like the surprises, and I like knowing just enough to work on the character.
Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene.
Most shows get dumped by the networks, do a couple of years in syndication, then they're in the vault. 'Mission: Impossible' has never been off the screen.
One of the major complaints for long-running shows is that they become mundane.
Five years is a good run for a sitcom; seven is good, but usually, it's a couple years of staying past your welcome.
When a show ends, I need some time to chill, as I feel that I have grown five years older after doing it! I need at least a month to rejuvenate. This happens with Indian TV shows. If you do a show continuously for more than a year, you feel 10 years older.
A show that's been successful that been on a while, chances are it's going to stay that way. At least it's going to maintain some kind of standard. But when a show begins, there's no telling. Even after 13 shows or a whole year, you don't know what will become of it.
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.
I've been on shows that went for years and years and years, and I was not ready for that again.
I watch 'Jeopardy!' every night and 'Wheel of Fortune' follows. And every time I'm like, 'Whoa, it's still on! This is still happening!'
I honestly feel that "Murder, She Wrote" stands alone, as many of the other great shows of the past 35, 40 years do. It stands alone, and it's still on. It's still all over the world, "Murder, She Wrote," Jessica Fletcher and "Murder, She Wrote."
I can get bored with any show, when it goes on too long.
Showrunner I admire: Weiss: "All friendship bias duly acknowledged: Rob McElhenney and the guys at 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' have been doing their show for longer than any live action comedy. To make something that consistently great for that long, and to keep it fresh ... I think that's a tremendous accomplishment.
I've met so many fans of daytime television who've watched the shows with their moms and grandmas and feel like they've known the characters their whole lives. It's sad for them to have to say goodbye to their favorite soaps and characters. We don't want that to happen to the 'Days' fans.
In Britain, we haven't got enough money to make these long-running shows. We always do little mini ones. You have more control as an actor over what you want to do with it. On these you drive yourself mad trying to know what's going to happen, because the writers don't.
I've done, like, eight pilots, and every time, everyone thinks it's going to go for 10 years.
I personally think the best ideas for TV shows - at least comedies - are very low-fi ideas. High concepts often sell pitches in movies and TV, but, especially in TV when you're talking about hopefully a 100 or 150 episode proposition, those concepts just burn off, and then you're stuck with nothing.
I want 'Chicago Fire' to go as long as 'SVU.'
The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: 'Tobacco Road', 'Abie's Irish Rose' and our old friend 'Spider-Man', which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong.
I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way.
I'd love to see the 'CSIs' run forever.
It's sad to see such institutions as 'All My Children' and some of the others, like 'Guiding Light,' which have been on the air for, like, 40 or 50 years. It's almost unfathomable to see that they actually aren't going to be on the air anymore. It's really sad.
