10 TV Shows That RECOVERED From Jumping The Shark

1. The West Wing

The West Wing was so thoroughly defined by Aaron Sorkin's singularly acidic, politically barbed dialogue that it's little surprise the show suffered through a major downturn once he left at the end of season four.

Season five was a mere pallid shadow of what came before, lacking the biting humour, incisiveness and coherent character work that earmarked its best seasons, replaced with icky melodrama and sub-Sorkin dialogue desperately trying to evoke his signature penmanship.

Hilariously, Sorkin himself said that the new regime was like "watching someone make out with [his] wife."

But thankfully, after a relatively rocky sixth season, The West Wing returned to something approaching solid form for its seventh and final batch of episodes, doubling down on the prescient politics and pithy humour that fans loved about the Sorkin years.

Did it fully recapture the glory of the first four seasons? No, but the charm and energy that had been severely lacking through season five and much of season six was mercifully restored.