Hard act to follow or tough act to follow

be a hard/tough act to follow (informal)​
to be so good that it is not likely that anyone or anything that comes after will be as good:
His presidency was very successful - it'll be a hard act to follow.
Cambridge Dictionary

The Guardian:
Apple's crown is slipping – will news and TV shows be its next big thing?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/24/apples-crown-is-slipping-will-news-and-tv-shows-be-its-next-big-thing

“It’s showtime,” reads the invite for Apple’s next big launch. It sure is. On Monday at the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre in Apple’s $5bn space-age campus in Cupertino, California, the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, will unveil his big plans to become a modern media mogul.

Details of the plans are sketchy but it appears Apple will be launching a new platform for news publishers with paywalls – the Wall Street Journal is in, New York Times and Washington Post are not – and announcing a series of new TV deals and original programmes that will put it head to head with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and their rivals in streaming media as they fight it out to be the new kings of Hollywood.

Cook, who took over running Apple from Jobs in 2011, has a lot riding on the event. Jobs was always going to be a tough act to follow and while Cook may lack his charisma he has delivered on performance.

When Jobs died in October 2011, Apple was valued at about $300bn. It is now worth three times that. Cook – an operational whiz – has turned Apple into a cash-generating juggernaut that is the most valuable brand in the world. (...)

Joseph and Mary in Bed
DUNCAN MACLEOD DECEMBER 17, 2009
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2009/joseph-and-mary-in-bed/

St Matthew in the City, a progressive Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand, has hit the news with their Christmas billboard. Joseph and Mary are shown in bed together, with Mary clearly not paying attention to Joseph. “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow”. The sign has offended conservative Christians, one of whom took to the billboard with a can of paint only hours after the billboard was erected.

Glynn Cardy, priest at St Matthew in the City, explains some of the thinking behind the billboard.

“The Christmas billboard outside St Matthew-in-the-City lampoons literalism and invites people to think again about what a miracle is. Is the miracle a male God sending forth his divine sperm, or is the miracle that God is and always has been among the poor?”

“Progressive Christianity believes the Christmas stories are fictitious accounts designed to introduce the radical nature of the adult Jesus. They contrast the Lord and Saviour Caesar with the anomaly of a new ‘lord’ and ‘saviour’ born illegitimate in a squalid barn. At Bethlehem low-life shepherds and heathen travelers are welcome while the powerful and the priests aren’t. The stories introduce the topsy-turvy way of God, where the outsiders are invited in and the insiders ushered out.”


I couldn't avoid to have a look at the St Matthew in the City bilboard collection.
https://www.stmatthews.nz/billboards