10 TV Shows Which Didn't Get Better With Age

When your favourite show gets cancelled, it can be soul destroying. When it goes out on top with a great ending, it feels like TV time well spent. When it sticks around too long and disgraces itself over and over again, it's just plain infuriating.

If there's one thing the world's biggest shows nearly always have in common, it's a top notch Season 1. The first instalment sets the stage for the rest of the show, mounting a high bar fans will come back to see exceeded next year. While fandoms sprout like weeds, sharks start getting jumped.

Budgetary restraints, cast members leaving too soon, new (worse) writers taking over. Any number of reasons can prompt a series to slide off a cliff. Before you know it, the once praised show becomes a joke, even the good stuff is dismissed and history treats it appallingly (or forgets it completely).

You get millions of cranky viewers realising they spent literal days of their lives watching a show they now hate, wishing they could go back and do something else with all that lost time.

Not everything can age gracefully...

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother was one such example. Set over Barney and Robin's wedding weekend, the season provided little laughs or anything at all beyond padding out the stars' bank balances. Storylines were repetitive, jokes were flat and character development moved backwards.

We're given little time to know Tracey Mosby, the all important mother referred to in the title. Before you know it, you're watching her death and Ted is stumbling his way back to Robin. A bizarre 180 for both characters, it appeared the writers' suddenly wanted Ted and Robin to have a Ross and Rachel dynamic. Undoing nine long years of story telling in one go, the series insulted viewers and its own premise with a cheap last minute twist.

Reappraisals of the series in the years since have often proved negative. Its finale turns up in most worst series finales lists out there, and criticism has been aimed at its writing, characters and catchphrase-laden humour. One can't help but feel its fans (and viewers in general) would remember it more fondly had it not proven such a letdown at its last haul.