Bill Hader as Stefan in Weekend Update on SNL.
Nowadays, a TV show running for more than five seasons is rarer than ever. Miniseries and short-lived shows tell their stories succinctly, with a meaningful beginning and end. The exception, of course, are procedurals, kids' shows, cartoons, and a few others that remain so popular, there's seemingly no end to their formulaic runs.
Not only is it rare for a show to last so many seasons, but it's even less likely for the show to continue to be as good as it was in the beginning, and virtually impossible that it's better. Yet there are a few shows that have achieved this feat. Here are shows with more than 20 seasons that are better than ever. 1 'South Park' One of several adult animated sitcoms that have been airing for decades, South Park is perhaps the most vulgar, most risqué of the bunch. It has a very specific audience of fans who understand the controversial humor and the fact that the series doesn't take itself too seriously, even though it often pokes fun at very serious topics. That hasn't changed through the show's 28 seasons to date, the latest of which premiered in October 2025. South Park continues to push the envelope, making waves with its scathing skits featuring an animated version of President Donald Trump and the Devil. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone show no mercy — nothing is off limits, and they aren't afraid to alienate viewers. That's precisely what continues to make the show so beloved by long-time fans. 2 'Sesame Street' Is there a show as iconic as Sesame Street? The educational children's series has been a mainstay of the daytime TV schedule for decades. Despite moving to streaming to keep up with the times , Sesame Street remains as relevant as ever. The show's strength has always been in its educational value for young children, using a combination of live action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry to get kids engaged about everything from letters and numbers to what it means to be a good person. As the show has aged, it has kept up with the times with a refreshed list of celebrity appearances, even focusing on current issues, including acceptance, gender identity, autism, and cultural expression. 3 '60 Minutes' For 58 seasons , 60 Minutes has uniquely presented itself like a magazine delivered in television format. Way ahead of its time in this respect, each episode covers two to three topical issues through on-location tours, insights, interviews, sit-downs with influential figures, and heavily researched projects. Whether you want to know what's going on in current politics or learn how whiskey is made, the news magazine show has something for everyone. The episodes remain fitting to the times, often covering hard-hitting topics, uncovering truths, and entertaining with topical subjects like the latest in robotics and AI or advancements in the field of medical research. The segments range from emotional to thought-provoking, informative to controversial. But they're never stale and always touch on the concerns of the public in the moment.Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Ten questions will figure out exactly where you belong. 🚨The Pitt 🏥ER 💉Grey's Anatomy 🔬House 🩺Scrubs FIND YOUR HOSPITAL → QUESTION 1 / 10APPROACH 01 A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are. AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 2 / 10MOTIVATION 02 Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview. ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 3 / 10COLLEAGUES 03 What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are. ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 4 / 10PRESSURE 04 How do you actually perform under extreme pressure? The worst shifts reveal things about you that the good ones never will. AI narrow in — everything irrelevant falls away and I become completely focused on what's in front of me. BI lead — pressure is when I'm at my most useful, keeping everyone else on track while managing my own fear. CI feel it fully and work through it — I don't pretend the fear isn't there, I just don't let it win. DI get sharper — high stakes are clarifying. This is exactly the environment I think best in. EI hold it together in the moment and fall apart slightly afterwards — which I've made my peace with. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 5 / 10LOSS 05 You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question. AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 6 / 10STYLE 06 How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image. AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 7 / 10RULES 07 How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice. AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 8 / 10SPECIALISM 08 What kind of medical work do you find most compelling? What draws your attention when you walk through those doors matters. AEmergency and trauma — I want to see everything, handle anything, and never know what's coming next. BGeneral emergency medicine — breadth over depth, keeping the whole machine running under impossible conditions. CSurgery — I want to be in the room where the most consequential thing happening is happening right now. DDiagnostics — the cases no one else can solve, the symptoms that don't add up, the answer hiding underneath everything. EWhatever needs doing — I'm a generalist at heart and I find something interesting in almost every patient. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 9 / 10TOLL 09 What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours? AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital. NEXT QUESTION → QUESTION 10 / 10PURPOSE 10 At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you. AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job. REVEAL MY HOSPITAL → Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In… Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for. PITTSBURGH TRAUMA MEDICAL CENTER The Pitt You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown. The Pitt doesn't romanticise the work — it puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away. You are someone who needs their work to be real, who finds meaning not in the drama surrounding medicine but in medicine itself, and who has made peace with the fact that this job will take from you constantly and give back in ways that are harder to name. You don't need the chaos to be aestheticised. You need it to be honest. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is exactly that — and you would not want to be anywhere else. COUNTY GENERAL HOSPITAL, CHICAGO ER You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential. County General is built on the shoulders of people who show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without requiring the job to be anything other than what it is. You care deeply about patients as individual human beings, you believe in the system even when it fails you, and you understand that emergency medicine at its core is about holding the line between order and chaos for just long enough. ER is television about endurance, and you have it. GREY SLOAN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, SEATTLE Grey's Anatomy You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. Grey Sloan is a hospital where the personal and the professional are permanently, chaotically entangled, and where that entanglement produces both the greatest disasters and the most remarkable saves. You are someone who feels things fully, who forms deep attachments to the people you work with, and who understands that the most extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection. It's messy here. You would not have it any other way. PRINCETON-PLAINSBORO TEACHING HOSPITAL, NJ House You are drawn to the problem above everything else. Not the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it — but the case as a puzzle, the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. Princeton-Plainsboro is a hospital that exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind, and everyone around that mind is there because they are smart enough and stubborn enough to keep up. You work best when the stakes are highest, when the standard answer is wrong, and when the only way forward is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you would do here. SACRED HEART HOSPITAL, CALIFORNIA Scrubs You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure, and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time. Sacred Heart is a hospital where the laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable — where a terrible joke can get you through a terrible moment, and where the most ridiculous people are also, on their best days, remarkably good doctors. You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field. You lean on the people around you and you let them lean back. Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job — and you are still very much in the middle of that process, which is exactly right. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 'Grey's Anatomy' Some may feel as though Grey's Anatomy has overstayed its welcome, but with fans still excited whenever a new season or episode comes out, it seems like its spot in the primetime line-up remains solid. The medical drama has seen cast shake-ups, memorable events, patients, interns, and lots of soapy drama. None of that gets old, and there's no shortage of crazy illnesses and accidents to cover or love and life drama to encounter. Fans feel like they're watching the staff at a real hospital dealing with challenges, even if it is heavily embellished for dramatic effect. Grey's Anatomy remains ABC's longest-running scripted primetime show that does well both on that network and streaming. The wheels keep turning, with the latest 22nd season exploring the former residents now teaching their own new generation of interns. This show could theoretically go on forever and always remain culturally relevant as long as fans keep watching. 5 'General Hospital' There's an infinite list of daytime soap operas that would fit this theme, but General Hospital remains the longest-running American soap opera that is still in production, with more than 15,000 episodes in its arsenal. The series is like any other of the genre, centered around the salacious activities of its ever-changing cast. The unique aspect of this show is the backdrop of a hospital in New York. What makes General Hospital better than ever is that, despite being on the air for so long, it doesn't recycle storylines. It's always a fresh, albeit outlandish, take on the sensational happenings. With a recent shake-up in the writer's room back in 2024, the fresh take continues as new writers aim to deliver more entertaining storylines around the dysfunctional family dynamics. 6 'Saturday Night Live' There are consistent cries that Saturday Night Live has lost its luster and is no longer funny. Everyone claims the best cast was in , usually the year the person making this declaration grew up. Yet, the sketch comedy show persists. SNL, as it's affectionately known by fans, has had its share of hiccups, including that one season where it almost went up in flames. But there's something about the consistency that has made watching it part of a weekend routine, or at least a YouTube search for the funniest clips. The fact that it's live so that anything can happen adds to the appeal. From memorable hosts to breathtaking music performances, SNL might not be as great as it was in its heyday, usually traced back to the early '70s . But decades from now, we'll probably look back at SNL in the 2020s and appreciate its humor, its handling of and influence on sensitive political subject matter, and its continued position in pop culture history. With 51 seasons, celebrating its huge 50th anniversary in 2025, SNL has managed to appeal to every generation since its inception and remains one of the most iconic shows ever. 7 'NCIS' Police procedurals tend to last long when they capture fans, often because they become part of the primetime routine. They usually have some thematic storylines across episodes, but for the most part, it's a formula that works to ensure longevity. The authorities investigate a case, question suspects, get into dangerous situations, and eventually find the perpetrator. Lather, rinse, repeat. It sounds repetitive and predictable, and it is, yet shows with the best writing and unique spins like NCIS find ways to keep it interesting. NCIS follows special agents in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, making it stand out amongst a sea of other procedurals. Renewed for a 24th season, NCIS has led to several spin-offs as well to keep the momentum going and the interest high. 8 'Family Guy' Like others of its kind, Family Guy manages to always remain part of the cultural zeitgeist because it features a family that never ages. Over two-plus decades, every episode is just another day in the life of the Griffin family and the show's other characters, which include their anthropomorphic talking dog and baby who can speak in a British accent . Subscribe to the newsletter for deep takes on long-running TV Want richer context on TV legends and why some series improve with time? Subscribe to our newsletter to get curated coverage, analysis, and recommended episodes about long-running shows and broader TV and pop-culture topics. Get Updates By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime. The animated sitcom touches on politics, social issues, and even controversial ones, often with sexually charged and inappropriate storylines that are tamer than South Park but might still shock some viewers. At its heart, Family Guy aims to shine a spotlight on American culture, which means every episode is written to be current with the times. It's another show that could go on forever, and its 24 seasons and counting suggest it might very well do just that. 9 'Law & Order: SVU' Already surpassing Law & Order, the show for which it serves as a spin-off, Law & Order: SVU has been going strong for 27 seasons and nearly 600 episodes. It holds the distinction of being the fourth-longest-running primetime scripted series based on episode count, two of which were from decades ago. The series and all its best episodes deal with sexually based crimes, making its subject matter far more uncomfortable than Law & Order. But fans love how it dives deep into emotional cases, some of which are inspired by real-life ones. Introducing fans to the iconic TV duo of Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson , the show keeps fans on their toes with clever writing that introduces new cases that shock you, even when you think they can't possibly continue to do so. It's one of those shows to watch when nothing else is on. Whether it's the middle of an episode or even one you've seen already, Law & Order: SVU continues to draw fans in with the acting, compelling stories, wonderful guest stars, and exploration of both the police and the legal sides of cases. 10 'The Simpsons' The longest-running American scripted primetime series ever, The Simpsons is a show that kids grew up with, then their kids, and even some grandkids. It has been on for that long. The adult animated sitcom follows the same formula as others, with a family that never ages. In fact, it's the success of The Simpsons that inspired all others that have come since. With storylines that are either timeless or reflect the current time, it's easy to watch an episode and know exactly when it aired. That's the beauty of the show, as episodes presented today will be relevant cultural time capsules a decade from now, just as ones from the '90s and '00s are today. It's a reflection of cultural sentiment, so you'll notice reflections of the times, like characters starting to use smartphones or spoofing popular movies. The Simpsons shifting away from political satire in recent years may be part of the reason some fans love it even more. It's mostly mindless, though still witty and clever humor and satire without pushing any agenda. Like Follow Followed The Simpsons TV-PG Family Animation Comedy Release Date December 17, 1989 Network FOX Showrunner Al Jean Directors Steven Dean Moore, Mark Kirkland, Rob Oliver, Michael Polcino, Mike B. Anderson, Chris Clements, Wes Archer, Timothy Bailey, Lance Kramer, Nancy Kruse, Matthew Faughnan, Chuck Sheetz, Rich Moore, Jeffrey Lynch, Pete Michels, Susie Dietter, Raymond S. Persi, Carlos Baeza, Dominic Polcino, Lauren MacMullan, Michael Marcantel, Neil Affleck, Swinton O. Scott III, Jennifer Moeller Cast See All
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