Digg is not in the hot take business, but TV matters not only to us, but to our readers. That's why it's our duty to help you save your precious time, and not get bogged down watching countless hours of bad television, just to say you finished a show.

These are our picks for the seven shows that were best in season one — really terrific, all-time first seasons that just never had the juice to deliver beyond the first year. Some of these shows had okay second seasons, but all of them really should have ended sooner and not been renewed, because they eventually ran out of good stories and went off the rails soon after.

'Homeland'

Based on an Israeli show called "Prisoners of War," this was Showtime's biggest hit back in 2011. It won both the Emmy and Golden Globe for Best Drama, and really catapulted Claire Danes and Damian Lewis back into the limelight. It's a perfect season of television, and had an almost perfect ending that would have sealed the deal if only a particular character had died.

Instead, "Homeland" dragged on for seven more seasons — during which it would devolve into random explosions without explanation or main character deaths without any real resolution, and meander into mediocrity after a sensational and taut first season.

Where does the story go when the central conflict ends after 12 episodes? You write new, worse conflicts to chase that aren't as satisfying as the original concept of a sleeper agent activated to attack the US. Everything else after that just seemed superfluous, and adding on extra bad guys to vilify weren't necessary either. The show got bogged down in trying to one-up itself, but nothing came close to the magic of the first season, and fans know it.

Watch on Showtime or Hulu.

'Killing Eve'

This is another adaptation that had a lot of source material — in this case, a series of "Villanelle" novels by Luke Jennings — and that simply should have abandoned things after the first year's worth of story. "Killing Eve" was a revelation for fans of Sandra Oh, and introduced the wider world to the talents of English actor Jodie Comer. The first season was exciting, funny, sharp and sultry — and swept the Emmy's, as many of the shows on this list have.

But there was a noticeable downturn in quality after the first season, after showrunner and creative force Phoebe Waller-Bridge left, and was replaced by Emerald Fennell. Once the cat-and-mouse game ends, where do you go from there? The show dissolved into a murder mystery, government conspiracy and a buddy cop show — it just didn't have the same verve as that first season, where the two stars barely interacted. The magic was in the juxtaposition of the hero and the villain, not in them constantly talking every episode.

Watch on AMC+ or The Roku Channel.

'Mr. Robot'

Much like the series above, the first season of "Mr. Robot" came like a bat out of hell to grab a bunch of Emmy awards and Golden Globes for Rami Malek and Christian Slater. The show is a fantastic combination of the weird and perverse, with a very troubled protagonist questioning reality and using technology to its absolute limits. The story touched on heavy subjects like paranoia, the problems young people face, the growing threat of cyber-security attacks, mental illness, conspiracy theories ruining people's lives, capitalism and America.

But once the first season ended, the momentum kind of went away. It didn't seem like there was any compelling reason to stick around, and while I only have anecdotal evidence to suggest people fell off for the remaining three seasons, ratings indicate there was also a massive drop-off in interest with the show. It just ran out of steam, and the things that made the show unique couldn't be replicated over and over. It's a shame, but I'm not sure a show like this could keep up its mysterious tone once it revealed the truth of Christian Slater's character. Imagine if "Fight Club" just kept going; it wouldn't be interesting to see a crazy man continuously running around with voices in his head.

Watch on Amazon.

'Westworld'

Yet another case of adaptation where there was only so much story to share; once "Westworld" got past its first season, you could tell the writers were only laying down the train tracks as the train was approaching. Much like "Lost," fans on Reddit who were invested in solving the mystery in later seasons seemed to notice that things were just being made up as they went along.

The strength of the first season was Anthony Hopkins as the creator of "Westworld" (as well as his performance), and the sense of anticipation we felt with things on the brink of disaster. The process of robots gaining sentience was exhilarating, and later seasons really slowed down the robo-uprising. Even the use of other theme parks just fell flat, and no mysteries that were presented were nearly as interesting as that first season, where anyone could have been a robot and we didn't know who the man in black was.

Watch on HBO.

'The Killing'

"The Killing" and the next show on the list both suffer from the same problem: trying to stretch the resolution of the main arc into a second season, thus not really paying off the story the showrunners were trying to tell. You could feel that the central murder case was wrapping up, and shouldn't really be extended into a multi-year thing — and yet, the finale disappointingly gives no answers, and expects us to care enough to tune in again a year into the future. No thanks.

This show had so much potential and promise; it had the setting, the vibe, the atmosphere and the cast to be a real hit. But unlike "True Detective," which went the anthology route (and also solved the case by the end of the season), "The Killing" just got bloated and was unsatisfying by the end. Having not seen the Danish series "The Crime," which this is based on, we don't know where to point the finger. This was not the "'Twin Peaks' without the weird in it" we were promised by AMC.

Watch on AMC+ or Netflix.

'Narcos'

Netflix had a real gem on their hands with "Narcos," and while it spawned a spin-off series in "Narcos: Mexico," I have a hard time not believing it fumbled the bag with the original premise. The whole conceit was to tell the story of Pablo Escobar and his drug empire, and instead of encompassing his rise and fall in one succinct season, the tenth episode just stops without any real ending. It feels like the writers just gave up and ran out of things to say.

It would take several more seasons to tell the entire Escobar saga, which is a huge bummer. The first season had so much momentum and star power, it was paced exceptionally well and just overstayed its welcome by choosing to peter out like a wet fart with its finale. The show should have finished the story they were trying to tell much sooner, not leave it on a boring cliffhanger, and shouldn't have wasted Pedro Pascal or Boyd Holbrook on bad TV for that long.

Watch on Netflix.

'The Walking Dead'

The first season of this graphic novel/comic book adaptation was a huge deal; a real TV phenomenon under the direction of legendary filmmaker Frank Darabont. It was the first (and maybe only) big-time zombie show, and the marketing campaign leading up to the premiere was gigantic.

And that first season is really good! Jon Berenthal is the best part of the show, and then for some reason AMC and the powers that be got rid of both Darabont and Berenthal, and just made countless pointless seasons of meandering boring drek that went nowhere and meant nothing.

Ultimately, "The Walking Dead" is a bad show that started off really strong, but quickly got bogged down with melodramatic nonsense and nihilistic ultra-violence that's ugly to watch and dreadful to ingest week in and week out.

Watch on Pluto TV.

If you enjoyed this list, we also listed our most anticipated films of 2024 and our most anticipated TV shows of 2024.