Tough Act To Follow / Live-Action TV

• Many a Soap Opera actor has run into this, either
  • Taking over for an actor who was a fan favorite. Some have successfully made the character their own, others have failed miserably, and even those who have succeeded will forever suffer from unfavorable comparisons to the previous actor.
  • Leaving their iconic role on one show to appear on another—Genie Francis became famous for her role as General Hospital's Laura, only to have mediocre success with roles on Days of Our Lives and All My Children, likely because viewers couldn't stop seeing her as Laura.
• Breaking Bad: Vince Gilligan has made two new series since the show ended:
  • Better Call Saul is a spinoff of Breaking Bad, so the fact it would struggle with this was a given. In spite of that, it ended up being an almost complete aversion, with there being a near-universal agreement that it is a worthy successor and one of the best prequels of all time, and a not-insignificant number of people even finding it superior to the original series, due to many finding more pathos and nuance in Jimmy's tragic fall than in Walt's.
  • Battle Creek was based on a script that Gilligan wrote before Breaking Bad. Although the show was well-liked, most people were too skeptical to tune in to a "commercialized" product, being on network TV instead of cable. The show was cancelled after one season due to low ratings.
  • The third to last episode of the series, "Ozymandias" is almost universally regarded as both the best episode of the series and one of the best episodes ever aired on television. The two final episodes of the series are widely regarded as superb in their own right and an excellent ending to the series, but many feel that they suffered a little, for no other reason than being forced to follow the universal praise for "Ozymandias".
  • El Camino is the film sequel/followup to Breaking Bad that acts as an epilogue to the series, as well as capping off Jesse's story. While most fans consider it good, if not great, they'd also agree it doesn't quite reach the heights of the last three Breaking Bad episodes, which ultimately says less about El Camino's quality and more about how highly acclaimed the finale really was.
• Chris Carter tried three different times to premiere new shows while his most famous show, and ultimately the only one that's remembered, The X-Files, was on the air. These shows are: Millennium (1996), a conspiracy show in a similar vein as The X-Files minus the paranormal angle; The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of The X-Files featuring three of its most popular supporting characters; and Harsh Realm, a critically derided effort featuring characters trapped in a virtual reality. All three featured an attempt at crafting a Myth Arc much like that of The X-Files but all three failed to catch on and each, except for Millennium, lasted less than one season—and even then, Millennium was retooled beyond recognition with each season. Millenium and The Lone Gunmen both received Fully Absorbed Finales on The X-Files and neither is remember as fondly. Harsh Realm on the other hand is almost not remembered at all. Since The X-Files' conclusion, Carter, who was once a well-known show runner on the same level as Joss Whedon, has mostly faded into obscurity, coming out of semi-retirement to write and direct an X-Files film which was not well received, and hasn't launched any other series or films since 2011.
• The Civil War: Ken Burns has written and directed documentaries about baseball, jazz, the Dust Bowl, the National Parks, Prohibition, the Roosevelts, the Vietnam War and Country Music - to name a few - but none will ever reach the ratings, media attention, or cultural impact of this single series.
• The Colbert Report: The series was such a pop culture phenomenon that no attempt to fill its time slot as a companion series to The Daily Show has succeeded so far. It was first replaced by The Nightly Show, which was met with a mixed response and ultimate canceled after 19 months. The slot was then filled with The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which was a more direct attempt to ape the success of The Colbert Report by doing the same thing to Alex Jones as the original show did to Bill O'Reilly. It, too, failed to garner a following and was canceled after 10 months. The time slot was subsequently filled with reruns of The Office (US) as Comedy Central regrouped.
• When the 2014 version of Cosmos was first announced, the makers cited this trope directly with regards to the 1980 original.
• The Crystal Maze: Original host Richard O'Brien's Large Ham antics made him a large part of the show's popularity. Edward Tudor-Pole, who replaced him in series five, wasn't necessarily bad at the job it was just that he had an impossible set of shoes to fill.
• The Daily Show. After it was announced that Jon Stewart would soon retire and Trevor Noah would take his place, many doubted whether Noah could fill Stewart's shoes. Indeed, the first episodes Noah did had jokes about Noah admitting just how great a task he'd taken on. Former correspondent John Oliver sympathetically said that Noah was "taking on the impossible" by having to "replace the irreplaceable."
• David Milch hit big with Deadwood, which achieved a lot of cultural saturation in spite of not being a ratings powerhouse. Neither of Milch's follow-up series, John from Cincinnati and Luck (2011), made it to a second season.
• Doctor Who:
  • Everyone's favorite Doctor is a tough act to follow — not to name names; you know where the bases are broken.
  • Some purists also apply this trope to the Modern Era (2005 onwards) versus the Classic Era (1963-1989). Certainly, in terms of longevity, the bl is unlikely to equal the original, although it still has run far longer than most English-language sci-fi series.
  • Leaving aside matters of quality, personal preference or favouritism, the Fourth Doctor as played by Tom Baker cast a long shadow over many of his successors in the role and to some degree continues to do so. There are many potential factors for this, but the simplest is probably that at seven years, he's still the actor who played the part on television the longest, and was also the star at a point when for numerous reasons the show was receiving its biggest ratings ever^note at 16 million viewers, episode four of 1979's "City of Death" continues to hold the record for Doctor Who episode with the largest viewing audience. As such, his interpretation of the Doctor had more opportunity to become cemented in more people's minds and thus became the one that much of the general public associated with the role. His unusual and distinctive style, including the distinctive 18-foot long scarf, also probably helped. And his successors have continued to be influenced by the way he portrayed the role in many different ways. Even today, the Fourth Doctor is still the one many people associate with the classic series when it's brought up and perhaps notably, Tom Baker was the only living pre-2005 Doctor to appear in person in the 50th anniversary special rather than just as part of stock footage.
  • Philip Hinchcliffe's tenure as producer (1975-77) is widely seen as the show's golden age. His replacement Graham Williams not only had to follow that, but he inherited a series with all sorts of production issues - budget problems, script problems, labour problems and a difficult star. While his era is era did produce some classic stories, it's widely considered inferior to his predecessor.
  • In terms of the modern series, the Tenth Doctor as played by David Tennant is something similar to the Fourth Doctor above; the Doctor to whom his successors tend to be compared to. While his successors have hardly been unpopular or disliked, Tennant took on the role at a point where Doctor Who was experiencing popularity and ratings success it hadn't seen in decades, his stories experienced both wide popular and critical acclaim, and even after leaving the role his Doctor remains widely popular.
  • The very first part of the first serial, "An Unearthly Child", is held in high acclaim as a perfect introduction to the show's premise and the characters of both the Doctor and his first set of companions. The other three parts of the serial are a lot more controversial, being a somewhat tame story about the Doctor meeting a tribe of stereotypical cavemen. Just about everyone agrees that after that debut episode, it took until the second serial, "The Daleks", for the show to really demonstrate its potential.
  • In 1984, "The Caves of Androzani" was Peter Davison's final story as the Fifth Doctor. It was an unexpected critical success and widely heralded as a fan favorite ever since its premiere. However, producers wanted to capitalize on the hype for the next actor who would play the Doctor, Colin Baker, by airing his first story right after Davison's last. This put him in a very unfavorable position, as he had no time for the Sixth Doctor's character to be scripted attentively, and what resulted... was for lack of a better word, a trainwreck. With a hastily written and undercooked story, jarringly cheesy costume and set design even by the show's usual standards, lacklustre acting from the episode's two central extras, and little time for audiences to be let down from the initial excitement of Caves, "The Twin Dilemma" hobbled onto the screen... and the reaction from audiences was not pretty, beginning the long, sad decline of the show over the remainder of the 1980s.
  • "The Day of the Doctor", the 50th anniversary special that teamed up the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, brought back much-loved Classic!Who villains the Zygons, showcased instant fan favorites the War Doctor and Osgood, and culminated in ALL 13 Doctors saving Gallifrey — among other things — was wildly acclaimed by critics and fans. A month later the Christmas Episode "The Time of the Doctor" came along; tasked with picking up where the previous story left off AND tying up Eleven's long-neglected Story Arc (the crack in time, the Silence, etc.), culminating in his regeneration into Twelve, in just one hour, it's largely regarded as underwhelming by comparison.
  • The Series 9 finale three-parter of "Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent", which saw the Doctor undergo a temporary transformation into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in the wake of his companion Clara getting Killed Off for Real, was a deeply emotional, dark, tragic story with a Bittersweet Ending. It was a succession of Wham Episodes that weren't universally acclaimed but had a big impact on fans and critics for better and worse, and at least one loose end that came back to bite the Doctor in the bottom ( finally returning to Gallifrey only to become a fugitive from his people once more). Not three weeks later came the MUCH Lighter and Softer Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song", an almost slapstick adventure with a romantic Bittersweet Ending far more sweet than bitter compared to the Series 9 endgame. While the show hadn't had a Breather Episode since Series 8 and it was time to throw the poor Doctor a bone, the Mood Whiplash was too much for some fans and critics. Also, the previous Christmas Episode "Last Christmas" had been a big hit for being scary, poignant, funny, and conceptually ambitious — sort of the ideal of a Doctor Who story — so a straightforward Romantic Comedy was going to seem like small potatoes by comparison.
  • In later years, it's become a trend that while most people do love and accept Thirteen as who she is despite the sheer idea of her being the first ever female Doctor on the show upsetting a huge bunch, Series 11 is considered very underwhelming, especially after the rather impressive success Series 10 had with being Twelfth's final run (which is ironic considering as stated above, Series 10 itself was considered underwhelming compared to Series 9 sans "Twice Upon a Time"). And even with that, Thirteenth's generally playful and energetic personality (and how she handles villains often leading to Karma Houdini) generally are seen as mixed bags compared to Twelfth's techniques to deal with his adversaries. Season Twelve gave her deeper characterisation, explaining the previous season was her running away, and she has to face the consequences of her past, continuing to push away her companions in depression and admit the team structure isn't always flat.
• Joe Absolom, who played Matthew Rose in EastEnders, quit the show in late 1999 in order to avert both this trope and Arc Fatigue. At the time, Matthew was embroiled in a storyline in which Steve Owen frames him for the murder of Saskia Duncan, which Steve had committed in self-defence and which Matthew had tried to help him cover up. Absolom didn't want the storyline to drag on for too long and didn't think it could be bettered once it did end, so he decided to quit and go out on a high note. And boy, did he ever.
• Elementary: Each season tends to end on a slew of continuous episodes that close out the season's Story Arc. General consensus seems to be that regardless of how good or bad they are, none have topped the ones from Season 1, which centered around the iconic adversarial relationship between Sherlock and Moriarty.
• NBC's December 2016 telecast of the Hairspray musical premiered on the heels of The New '10s' most-acclaimed network TV musicals thus far: FOX's January 2016 production of Grease, and NBC's December 2015 production of The Wiz. While Hairspray earned mostly positive reviews, many critics and viewers also called it less polished than Grease and/or The Wiz, despite sharing some backstage talent with both of them. Even more unfortunate, Hairspray scored the lowest Nielsen ratings of any musical aired live on American network TV during The New '10s so far. NBC also struggled winning over fans of the 2007 Hairspray movie, who couldn't resist making unfavorable comparisons between NBC's actors and its cast, and were even miffed that it was following the Broadway show instead of including changes that the movie had made. However, this telecast did manage to win three Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the most of any live NBC musical of The New '10s thus far.
• When Jeopardy! returned to the airwaves in 1984, Alex Trebek became the new emcee. At first, long-time fans of Art Fleming—who had helmed the show for eleven years on two different NBC runs—considered him a Replacement Scrappy. The comparisons stopped by the third season, at which point Trebek had become well-adjusted to the role. Such was his tenure that it is inevitable that candidates to replace him will face a similar challenge.
• On the topic of Tokusatsu, Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Hibiki is an odd example: instead of Kamen Rider Blade, the previous series in the franchise, being the tough act to follow, it's Hibiki itself. The show's two halves are very different - the first half is very different from a traditional Kamen Rider series, while the second half is more along the lines of traditional KR series. While the second half does have fans who disliked how different the first half was, many fans felt that the first half was stronger because of how different it was.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva faced this as a result of coming after Kamen Rider Den-O - while Den-O wasn't a huge ratings success, it was popular enough to have movies made for it after the series had finished airing. Fortunately, Kiva managed to be successful.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim is currently a tough act - Kamen Rider Drive got hit by this hard, but was able to be successful like the aforementioned Kiva. However, the same can't be said for Kamen Rider Ghost, which on top of having to live up to the somewhat-lesser hype that Gaim had, also had to deal with the incredible task of following up Drive, which significantly improved in the end.
  • Ghost's succesor, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid managed to avoid falling into this. Gaim comparisons were everywhere, both popularity-wise and story-wise, but Ex-Aid withstood that and became a successful series in its own right.
  • When Ex-Aid ended there were concerns as to how the following series, Kamen Rider Build, would measure up. Not only did it meet the high bar set by Ex-Aid, it surpassed it... and in doing so, set an even higher bar for the following series to overcome. Kamen Rider Zi-O got it the worst as Build's immediate follow-up, but even nowadays most new Rider seasons tend to get compared to Ex-Aid and/or Build in some way. Those two shows seem to be where the franchise peaked, and the installments that have come after have as of yet been unable to live up to their level of acclaim.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus was such a revolutionary show that changed comedy altogether that the main cast members have consciously done more conventional comedy stuff afterwards. Many other alternative sketch comedy shows have tried to imitate Monty Python, but still pale in comparison to the anticommercial risks the Pythons took. Some comedians have even thrown ideas away because they were too Pythonesque in nature.
• Aaron Sorkin announced after the end of his HBO series The Newsroom that he was done with TV and was going to focus on theater and movies. His reasoning? "I've made four TV shows in my life, and only one of them was The West Wing."
• After the success of The Office (UK), creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant actively parodied/dared people to invoke this trope in the lead-up and advertising for their next series Extras, which was essentially billed as "the show people are already calling 'the disappointing follow-up to The Office." Although Extras was largely praised as being just as good as their original series, comments of this nature could still nevertheless be heard from time to time.
• It's been a widespread opinion that, whether you like or dislike the series finale of Once Upon a Time in Season 7, it doesn't leave quite the impact that "The Final Battle" in Season 6 did. The lack of Emma until the very last scene is a big factor, as is the ending itself being much more controversial than the Season 6 finale's touching happy ending montage.
  • In term of the many Big Bads that the show has had, a plurality of viewers appear to feel like none of them that follow Robbie Kay's Peter Pan in the first half of Season 3 have managed to capture the same level of evil, menace and intrigue. Even the showrunners were made aware of this after he was voted "favorite villain" in a poll to commemorate the 100th episode, and they even brought him back for a brief cameo in the penultimate episode of the whole series.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Samurai isn't without its faults, but the series would have likely been better received had it not been adapted from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, a very well-received Sentai^note not helping things is that unlike most other PR shows, many Power Rangers fans actually watched Shinkenger, due to Disney airing a recut of the original series instead of adapting Shinkenger, and following Power Rangers RPM, considered one of — if not the — best season that Power Rangers has ever done. Similar things could be said about Wild Force coming behind Time Force, Lightspeed Rescue coming after the entire Zordon Era (Mighty Morphin-Lost Galaxy)^note strangely, it also suffers a case of "Tough Act to Proceed", since it comes before Time Force, meaning it's not uncommon for fans to overlook or forget the series and Turbo never stood a chance after Zeo.
  • Power Rangers Ninja Steel seems to be facing this at the moment - Power Rangers Dino Charge was able to Win Back the Crowd after the panned Samurai and Power Rangers Megaforce, leaving Ninja Steel with some big shoes to follow, on top of Ninja Steel being the first ninja-themed season since Power Rangers Ninja Storm. Unlike Samurai however, it's able to avert this in regards to its source material, as Ninninger is seen as one of the worst Sentai shows in recent memory.
  • Though the overall quality of Wild Force is debated, it is commonly agreed to have two of the best team-up episodes in series history, "Reinforcements from the Future" and "Forever Red." Few, if any, of the subsequent Ranger team-ups, have been able to match them.
  • To varying extents, this could be said of every series set after Power Rangers in Space, which not only managed to Win Back the Crowd after Turbo's lukewarm reception but was the Grand Finale of a Story Arc starting with the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. As all subsequent seasons are (mostly) self-contained, standalone works with only about 30 episodes to develop character and whatnot, they tend to fall short of a saga that had a six season buildup and was more or less at the apex of the Cerebus Rollercoaster by its end. It should be noted that Lost Galaxy, in Space's immediate successor, gets less of this reaction partially because of its holdovers from the Zordon Era ^note  Bulk, Professor Phenomenus, Alpha 6, the Astro Megaship, and Karone, though its darker tone and famous decision to kill off the Pink Ranger during the two-part PRiS crossover also played a role.
• When Bob Barker retired as host of The Price Is Right in 2007, his successor Drew Carey quickly fell under this trope — possibly because Carey was taking the reins of the longest-running daytime game show ever, despite Whose Line Is It Anyway? being the closest he ever done to a game show beforehand^note he also did a short-lived game show called Power of 10 shortly before he took over on Price. Granted, Bob had hosted for a whopping 35 years, so anyone would have had a tough time following Barker.
• The Prisoner (1967): Patrick McGoohan actually left the UK shortly after the controversial final episode aired and settled in the US, and his only television series since then (Rafferty) has been long forgotten except by die-hard cult fans. He did have some sporadic success in the US, notably when working with Peter Falk on some Emmy-winning episodes of Columbo but The Prisoner completely overshadows all his other work. Indeed, one of his Columbo episodes was essentially a riff on The Prisoner, and a film he starred in called Kings and Desperate Men not only was directed by and co-starred one of his Prisoner actors, but it revisited many of the earlier show's themes.
• On Saturday Night Live, when Norm Macdonald was fired in the midst of mild controversy, Colin Quinn's first episode as the Weekend Update anchor acknowledged this trope essentially saying "don't shoot the new guy."
• One reason there were multiple Sherlock Holmes adaptations set in modern times in the early 21st century is that, if you tried to make a period one, you'd be up against the memory of Jeremy Brett. Brett died in 1994, having adapted 41 of the 60 original Holmes stories for TV, and being widely regarded as the best Holmes since Basil Rathbone.
• The Shield writer Shawn Ryan's career has staggered. His follow-up shows The Chicago Code and Terriers and his time working as show-runner of Lie To Me were largely ignored by most.
• James Gandolfini worked pretty consistently after completing The Sopranos, taking several parts before his death in 2013 that helped subvert his mobster persona, such as the General in In the Loop, Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty, a grieving husband and father in Welcome to the Rileys, and a Gentle Giant love interest to Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said. That said, none of his roles matched up to the public ubiquity of Tony Soprano in popular culture.
• The Super Sentai series experienced this throughout the early and mid-'90s —Choujin Sentai Jetman was so immensely popular, that nearly every season that came after it in the next 9 years was seen as a huge step down, although Gosei Sentai Dairanger has been Vindicated by History as being a spectacular season in its own right. In 2000, when Mirai Sentai Timeranger began airing, the Jetman hype had finally died down, and even the hardcore Jetman fanbase was satisfied with Timerangers drama and story rivaling Jetman's.
  • General consensus was that Zyuranger and to a lesser extent Kakuranger were the only ones affected. Dairanger was an awesome series in its own right, and barring Ohranger (due to other factors), the other series were no slouches either.
  • Played straight, however, by Tensou Sentai Goseiger, coming immediately after the dripping-with-awesome Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. It doesn't help matters that Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger came after it. Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters got exactly the same position, coming right off of the immense success that was Gokaiger. And if that wasn't enough, Shinkenger and Go-Busters were both written by Yasuko Kobayashi, and the latter show kept being compared to her earlier work.
    • Go-Busters wasn't the only post Gokaiger show to be hit with this - Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger^note on top of Gokaiger expectations, Kyoryuger faced a similar dilemma to Go-Busters, since prior to working on this series, the head writer, Riku Sanjou, had previously written the much beloved Kamen Rider Double, meaning that many fans came into Kyoryuger with higher expectations on top of the ones set by Gokaiger, Ressha Sentai Toqger, and Shuriken Sentai Ninninger also got hit by this, much like the aforementioned post-Jetman shows, although ToQger would end up being Vindicated by History, especially after Ninninger was poorly received. Fortunately, Dobutsu Sentai Zyuohger seems to have been able to avert this.
  • Before Jetman, there was a four season long period of extremely well-received shows, from Dengeki Sentai Changeman to Choujuu Sentai Liveman. After Liveman came Kousoku Sentai Turboranger and Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, which ended up being average at best and aren't well remembered. Then came the aforementioned Jetman, and both seasons in between Liveman and Jetman had their fates sealed as essentially seasons that were just there.
  • Denji Sentai Megaranger has a specific storytelling example, as it was the season that introduced the Nezirangers (trope-naming The Psycho Rangers from the season's American counterpart Power Rangers in Space.) Unlike the typical "evil ranger" teams, who tend to be one-episode Elite Mooks, the Neziranger/Psychos were multi-episode complex villains with their own personalities, plots, and interpersonal relationships and conflicts. The team was such a massive success in this regard, that both the American and Japanese creative teams seem to realize that they'd never be able to replicate their success, and haven't seemed to be all that motivated to try, and subsequent "evil ranger" teams have been primarily relegated back to Elite Mooks status, with one of the few new attempts at a new Psycho-Ranger style team being the Five Venom Fists of Juken Sentai Gekiranger (named the Five Fingers of Poison in Power Rangers Jungle Fury,) who were popular, albeit at least party because of their similarities to the Psycho Rangers.
• It was unlikely The Thin Blue Line was ever going to be better than Ben Elton and Rowan Atkinson's previous work on Blackadder. The last series of the latter, with its widely praised Drama Bomb Finale, saw the series reach a high point and a fitting conclusion. This is thought to be why the writers ended it there.
• The fifth season of 24 was universally acclaimed and managed to net the series the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama. Season six, however, suffered from poor writing and is easily regarded as one of the worst of the show with the biggest problem coming from the writers trying to find a way to top season five's shocks early on, only to run out of steam immediately after that. Seasons 7 and/or 8, depending on who you ask, either improved the series after the sixth season slump or marked when the show officially went overboard, but its clear that both of them wound up living in the fifth season's shadow as well.
• The Wire is regarded by many TV critics as one of, if not the, best television show ever made. David Simon's follow-up, Treme has been chugging along in relative obscurity, which is admittedly what The Wire did for most of its run as well. Within the run of the series itself, there are many who cite the fourth season as one of, if not THE greatest season in all of television. By contrast, quite a number of fans and critics complained that the final season was hindered by Simon hanging his dirty laundry out to dry (particularly regarding its criticism of journalism, which echoed Simon's real life feelings on the Baltimore Sun). Luckily, those critics still cite the series finale as among the greatest episodes the show had done, so the show was still able to finish on a high note.
• The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss was unable to match its success with the books by Dr. Seuss it was based on; it only lasted for two 20-episode seasons on Nickelodeon, the second season completely Retooled it into a Bear in the Big Blue House-style Preschool Show, and it faded into obscurity after it ended.

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