Graphing out our favourite shows

A few years ago, my friend Paul and I came up with an idea we called The Trilogy Club: basically, we would sit down on a Saturday night and work our way through a classic movie trilogy - Star Wars*, Indiana Jones**, Back to the Future, The Matrix, and so on. It would be a fun way to spend an occasional Saturday night indoors, an excuse to hang out, and a chance to look back on a few old favourites.

Okay, so we didn't end up getting around to actually watching any of the trilogies (yet), but we did spend a considerable amount of time discussing various film trilogies and speculating how the rise and fall in the quality of each film in the trilogy would look if we were graph it, giving us a look at the overall trends.

Okay, so we didn't end up getting around to actually graphing any of the trilogies (yet), but I found myself thinking about those graphs earlier this week and wondering if I could somehow use them to look at specific shows, graphing how good each season of a particular show is and seeing if we could figure out what to expect from upcoming seasons.

Here are a few shows I've graphed out to start with:

True Blood
I've measured the quality of vampire show True Blood on a scale of cool from Vampires to Ninjas; True Blood is an example of a show which has steadily declined over the course of its run. As you can see below, the graph shows that we have no reason to believe it might improve when it returns later this year - although Tara is dead, so there's at least one reason to be hopeful.

Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is one of two current shows (along with Parks & Recreation) that have improved steadily since Season 1. Remember way back when Walter White first received his diagnosis, then that troubling second season when he let Jesse's girlfriend choke on her own vomit and inadvertently caused a plane crash ... c'mon, you know as well as I do that the show is better than it ever was back then. By the way, Season 3 of Breaking Bad started airing on Four last night (10.30pm). Hey, better late than never.

Mad Men
The fifth season of Mad Men starts tomorrow night on SoHo (with a double-episode at 8.30pm). What can we expect from the team at Stirling Cooper Draper Pryce? Well, either the show's best days are behind it (precipitating that drop after Season 3), or Season 4 was an aberration - having seen the brilliant first two episodes of the upcoming fifth season, I can tell you that it's probably the latter. Look for that upward trend across Seasons 1, 2 and 3 to continue.

Lost
I couldn't resist - and as you can see from the graph, only God knows how a seventh season might have turned out.

Of course, the graphs can't predict everything; changes in writing staff or in the cast can mean an improvement from year to year, for example. But I think this could be a fun way to look at how a show has been performing, and try to figure out how it might perform in future.

So, if you graphed your favourite shows, how would the graphs look? Steady improvements, or quick declines, from season to season? Or maybe a spiky graph that jumps all over the place? Suggest a few graphs for your favourite shows below, by rating each season out of 10 - I might even try to make a few of them over the weekend and post them at the On the Box Facebook page ...

(*) Original trilogy only, thank you very much.

(**) Technically a quadrilogy, I suppose, but only if you actually admit the fourth Indy movie ever happened.

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