Longest Quest in Television?

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Specifically it sounded like the nebulous idea of a quest as the setting, and then a bunch of things practically out of the control of what the end goal quest could be, just happen.

I am not really caught up on Pokémon, I have watched the first season of Pokémon Sun & Moon and watched part way into the second season. But with its fresh take of removing what had up till then just been Ash on a continuous journey that seems to never actually have any end goal other than reset into a new region, I like how Sun & Moon put its child character essentially into a journey in a classroom. The unclear goal of being a Pokémon master and winning the Pokémon League, which is the goal in the games, kind of lost its appeal to me when it became clear that there really was not any goal to have Ash actually grow up, and just mistaking more places and people as growth. Sun & Moon, from what I saw, felt like it put away the pretense, instead using a school which could follow multiple different goals of different kids, teachers, and an understanding that these are just steps to grander growth down the line, something that the franchise wants to stay perpetually in for new young audiences.

So a "quest" in a story can hold two purposes, one being a definitive end goal where the characters can achieve well enough, maybe emulating the Hero's Journey, or a drawn out one that can be used for many more smaller stories with different lessons. Distinguishing by length may not be so important.

Samurai Jack.

His quest was to destroy Aku who had enslaved his homeland. When he was about to kill Aku, he sent Jack into the future present day where Aku had already conquered Earth and the Universe. His new quest was to find a way to travel back to the past and stop Aku before all these events. He came close so many times but was foiled in the end. He quest lasted for 50 years before he finally got sent to the moment after his past self was sent forward in time and finished off Aku for good. Don't ask me about the time paradox. I can't explain it either.

Not as originally presented, but it retroactively became one at the end of 2017 with the episode Twice Upon A Time, where we hear the First Doctor say that he set out into the universe originally to find out why good triumphed over evil. This would make the quest start before the first 1963 episode (so 56 years and 286 multi-episode TV stories, plus innumerable non-TV media) and not be over yet, some 1500+ offscreen/in-universe years later.