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Merad

> I don't know were people have the time to watch that many series - I would trade TV series for great movies all day.

This is where streaming without commercials wins big. In the space of a typical two hour movie you can watch:

* 2 episodes of an HBO/Netflix type show where "hour long episodes" are actually an hour

* 3 episodes of a TV show where "hour long episodes" are 40 minutes

* 6 episodes of a sitcom type TV show where episodes are 20 minutes

With series, it's much easier to try it out and decide if you like it. Then, when you find something you do like, there's more content for the viewer to enjoy plus the possibility for storytelling and character depth that movies simply can't match in 2-3 hours.

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I get there are people who want to see more of the same.

Do you like stretched stories over many episodes? I don't, I want movies, 90-120min, with superior quality unseen in low budget TV series. Comparing to 1980s TV series, they had a lot of stunt work and felt higher budget than most todays TV series.

> Do you like stretched stories over many episodes?

Calling it stretched seems to imply that you're lowering the quality to make it last longer. That just isn't the case (most of the time). Look at a show like Stranger Things on Netflix - you could certainly trim and compress that story to make it work in a two hour movie, but it would probably be a very different story than what you get with the eight hour series.

> with superior quality unseen in low budget TV series

I don't know what your experience is with newer TV series, but there are plenty of them out there with large budgets and product quality to rival movies.

I really like the long arcs of today's top end TV. It's funny, I was thinking the other day that when I just want a short self-contained piece of entertainment, I reach for a movie. Which is a complete reversal from 15 to 20 years ago.

Also, have you watched any of the newer TV shows? They have astronomical budgets, better than some movies. And certainly better than 1980s TV. Knight Rider may have had practical car stunts, but it also had bad writing, bad acting, and bad directing. Modern TV has elevated all those things dramatically.

I was this way with books too. I went through several phases where I just couldn't get into a good series, but could read "stand alone" books all day long. These days, I feel like just as I get to know the characters, the story is over.

Enjoying both, I find myself leaning toward the "drawn out" stories, because they let me interact with characters that I like, for much longer periods.

At first I was annoyed at how TV series seem to have gone from 20+ episodes a season to down to as few as 8 per season (less than 4 in some cases, IIRC), but the almost "mini-series" style of shorter seasons makes less filler, but without the rush a movie has.

I agree with you if the content is actually stretched out (like filler episodes), but I find a lot of TV made for streaming is lacking filler content and is just telling a longer story. It's to the point now where when I watch a 90-120 minute story a lot of the plot development feels seriously rushed because it has to fit that 90-120 minute timeline.

One example that springs to mind is in the first Thor movie. I didn't even realize the love interest was actually supposed to be that because it felt like they met and interacted for a grand total of 30 minutes (in their world, not screentime) before the climactic ending with Thor and love interest kissing.

I watched iBoy on Netflix as well (90 minutes) and despite any other criticism of the plot or production value, it just felt like things escalated incredibly quickly without any time for character development or fleshing out any plot details.

Try West World, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and Taboo and tell me they don't have feature-film-level production quality.

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