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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Personal opinion from a brit:

US series are too long.

It is a psychological thing I guess - sitting down and perusing netflix, see something you like but then realise it is 24 hour-long episodes just in the first season. It is a turn off - I can't commit upfront to that amount of time to something entirely unknown to me.

Especially since in a lot of series I've watched, they often lose their way and 99 times out 100 the last 2 or 3 seasons inevitably decay into a "will-they-wont-they" thing about two characters falling in love or whatever, and the rest of the cast and whatever made the series good originally is mostly ignored. Then they're cancelled. So e.g. Lost, US Office, that 70s show and many more all went on way too long while dancing around with romance between two characters etc etc while ignoring what made the first season or two appealing.

Don't get me wrong, I love binge watching something good and I am disappointed when I run out of episodes or whatever, but it is good for people to know when to end a show and leave people with good memories, rather than turning it into a death march where people are relieved to just have finished the show.

Give me 8 to 10 good episodes per season, and please don't string it out for 7, 8, 9 seasons when there is only enough ideas for 2 or maybe rarely 3 seasons's worth of episodes.

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> US series are too long.

I generally agree with you. However, the main issue with Netflix is that they are cancelling shows without letting them wrap things up. Letting shows die on cliffhangers or when the cast and writers are finally getting into a groove. This does nothing but cause turmoil amongst the fan base and some of Netflix's most dedicated, paying customers.

If they set out from the start to wrap things up in 2-3 seasons and let the writers plan for that, it would be fine. As of right now, they let writers build up massive plots in the first two seasons only to pull out the rug right when things are getting interesting.

> However, the main issue with Netflix is that they are cancelling shows without letting them wrap things up.

That's rather the norm for shows; cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision. And cliffhangers are often a tactic used to as an audience retention trick when the team behind a show knows it is at risk of not doing well enough to continue, so it's particularly common (Netflix aside) for it to be used at the end of a season that turns out to be a shows last.

Sure, but come on - Netflix isn't the same medium as Cable/Broadcast.

In cable/broadcast, the show was gone when it was cancelled. It wouldn't air anymore outside of re-runs (which rarely happen for cancelled series), and new content was designed to fill the space.

The whole freaking point of Netflix is that I can watch any item from their entire catalog at any time I'd like.

That includes all of those cancelled shows.

So as a user, I'm left in a really weird spot. I want the content that was cancelled, but I'm much less likely to watch a story based show if I know it was canned and will never be finished.

Basically - I'd argue strongly that Netflix is (intentionally or not) drastically undermining the long term value of their catalog by not allowing shows to conclude.

That's not to say they should fund a show forever, (it's still a business) but it does mean the intelligent thing to do would be to fund out some sort of conclusion or ending to those cancelled series.

A 2 season show with a 6 episode "conclusion" instead of a season 3 - That's something I would probably pick up and watch: I know it's a complete story and will have some sort of resolution (good or bad).

A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger? Will NOT TOUCH. Fuck that. Doesn't matter how good it is, doesn't matter how much I like the genre - It's not a product, it's an unfinished waste of time.

> A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger? Will NOT TOUCH

I think that you are almost-but-not-quite hitting another problem of binge consumption patterns that I think might be very central to the problem of Netflix show cancellations:

If I'm a long term subscriber and I'm used to bingeing finished shows: will I even want to start a show before it's concluded or would I rather wait a few years and then watch it completely? Inter-season gaps are bad enough in broadcast, but with season-bingeing they extend to >11 months and that's just not very attractive.

If Netflix isn't excellently careful with what subsets of their data they look at this effect might blindside them very hard: are people maybe not starting S2 because they loved S1 so much that they'll deliberately not switch on S2.01 upon availability but would rather start with rewatching S1 it in its entirety once S3 hits? This information is not in the tracking data, better focus on intra-season dropouts. Success metrics can be hard.

> Inter-season gaps are bad enough in broadcast, but with season-bingeing they extend to >11 months and that's just not very attractive.

It's also a completely different time frame for the binged show. A weekly released 10 episode season that would have occupied your mental space for around two and half months before returning nine and half months later might now be something you engaged with for just two days before not thinking about it for a year.

There's a reason so many streaming shows need to have season recaps, because in the year or two it takes for the next season you've completely lost all the story beats. As you mentioned, I find myself wanting to rewatch the previous season(s) before a new one kicks off, but that becomes really onerous with 10+ hours per season.

I was under the impression Netflix canceled most of their shows after the second season because by that point contracts have to be renewed and renegotiated: it just cost too much vs taking their special sauce and applying it to a whole new show with new actors that are cheaper.

The trouble with this is that after a while, people stop watching anything made with their special sauce at all.

We were late to the Netflix party in my household. We got it to watch a few big name films and shows that we weren't so keen on that we were going to buy them on disc (which we did, and still do, for "keepers").

When they started making their own shows, I watched a few, but nearly all of them ended up disappointing either immediately or after jumping the shark within a season or two. The words "Netflix Originals" are now a synonym in my mind for "probably won't be worth it, let's watch something else". Frankly, I don't even bother scanning that list on the home page for stuff to watch any more, unless I'm looking for a specific show that I already have reason to think I'll enjoy.

This is likely correct. Here’s an article that explains their cost structure.

https://deadline.com/2019/03/netflix-tv-series-cancellations...

Only if a show hits it out of the park do they continue beyond the second season.

There's now this unfortunate catch 22 where people won't bother watching shows for the first 2 seasons in case they get cancelled. Which means there's less audience, so they're more likely to get cancelled...

This is true, but it's not my problem as the viewer. There are many more shows I'd probably enjoy than I'll ever have time to watch. I'm not going to prop up Netflix or other corporate backers that repeatedly fail to respect their viewers by not wrapping things up reasonably neatly.

If there was enough doubt about whether a show was popular enough to be renewed that the production team didn't know whether to wrap up neatly in a potential final season, there is probably enough popularity left to justify making a mini-series or "TV movie" to finish things off with some closure for viewers. I've known a few shows do this over the years, and IME it almost always gets a favourable reaction from fans and reflects well on the show and those behind it.

There is no catch-22. Usually those decisions are made well in advance. The OA from the article aired in March 2019 and was cancelled in August.

You appear to be saying that the cancellation decision was made in a vacuum, without considering viewership. I don't believe this to be true.

My point was that the viewership might have been low because nobody wants to watch the first season until they know the third season at least is being made to avoid being cliff-hung. That is the catch-22; third seasons are not being made because people don't watch shows until they have a third season.

>You appear to be saying that the cancellation decision was made in a vacuum, without considering viewership. I don't believe this to be true.

No. Viewership was low, so it got cancelled. If it got cancelled before airing then a low viewership would be a result from that. But that's usually not the sequence.

If that is the catch-22 you could apply this to a 4th season aswell. Or 5th.

Shows don't get renewed during or before a season. At least most of them don't, so it's always a gamble.

It’s like any other modern growth company - they are a machine optimized to hit a small set of metrics.

TV networks had an incentive to hit 100 episodes for syndication. Netflix wants you to sign up, and knows that the friction of cancellation will keep you subscribed long enough to get whomever their KPI hit/bonus.

Twin Peaks is (or, was) exactly this: "A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger". The third season went in to production 25 years after the cliffhanger ending. The show was very much still worth watching even before season 3 became reality. A cliffhanger ending is still a kind of resolution and is not inherently bad.

There are 2-season shows with no ending or clearly rushed endings that are still worth watching: check out Party Down.

Does any kind of sloppy ending make an entire show worthless or is there some cutoff screen-time that makes it acceptable? Consider Game of Thrones. Are seasons 1-3 still worth watching even though 4-6 are mediocre and 7-8 are dumpster fires?

Totally seconding Party Down. That was such a funny show that I think ended too soon.

Consider Game of Thrones. Are seasons 1-3 still worth watching even though 4-6 are mediocre and 7-8 are dumpster fires?

As someone who enjoyed the show for a long time and watched it all the way through, I'm not sure the answer to that is obvious. They wrecked it so badly in the final episodes that I don't currently see myself doing the marathon rewatching thing with it. I'm also not sure I'd recommend it to a friend who hadn't seen it, knowing it was setting them up for such a huge disappointment.

You got burned because you watched S7 and S8 and you have a grudge against D&D. But S1-S6 developed many good characters and plotlines, and it's OK leave a world in progress. Especially in GoT world which is all about treachery and turmoil -- the idea of a tidy ending for everyone is absurd, unless everyone dies. So someone new knows to watch only S1-S6 and it's a good show.

But S1-S6 developed many good characters and plotlines, and it's OK leave a world in progress.

Some people don't mind that. Personally, I enjoy stories with closure. I find it a huge downer to know the canon ending sucks and will ruin the plot for many characters I have been following.

If nothing else, skipping the final episodes means I have to decide when to stop watching. In the case of GoT, the end of season 6 is one possibility, but arguably the worst shark-jumping happened after The Long Night in the middle of season 8 and watching that far does resolve some of the other plot lines.

My position is that the problems exist well in advance of season 8 but that in seasons 5/6 it still felt as if there was enough runway for things to land safely.

This turned out not to be the case. Partially due to creator disinterest (by some accounts, HBO was essentially pushing to give them 10+ seasons with generous budgets) and partially due to a writing style that prioritized "big moments" over character/world building and consistency.

I think this is best exemplified by Arya's "House of Black and White" arc (light spoilers) in season 6. The arc setup is that the Faceless master tells her constantly "To become Faceless you must discard your identity completely -- become no one" while Arya secretly refuses to discard the literal symbol of her identity (her sword, Needle, hidden near the temple). This tension is then essentially just ignored and seemingly forgotten for the entire arc which ends with her being accepted by the master as a Faceless Woman (as "no one") while also maintaining her identity as Arya Stark (by keeping Needle). Nothing in her story ever refutes, upholds, or explores this contradiction. Like many other potentially interesting things, it is brought up superficially (possibly by accident) then lost in the shuffle as the show rushes to the next "big moment".

I don’t understand something about showbiz.

Tons of fans of shows like The Tick and Limitless have wanted it to continue. They would watch it, and so on. Someone made a decision to pull the plug.

Similarly, I have never seen anything other than gushing reviews and can’t-wait expectations of the Cadillac Ciel since the 2011 pebble beach show, but then the company never produced it, instead creating some sort of coupe. The Ciel was only ever seen in that Entourage movie.

The phenomenon of not listening to the fan base is real. But here is my question...

WE ARE IN THE AGE OF DECENTRALIZATION AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE. Why not have a platform where people raise money for shows, and whatever budget that is, the show makes episodes for it? Like Patreon meets kickstarter, or Patreon with a loan component for future shows.

That way, the only way a show would get canceled is if it went bankrupt and was unable to pay its loans from its Patreon-like revenues.

More generally, some company has the infrastructure (which is centralized for now, like Netflix) and we have to rely on it being magnanimous enough to let the public have a say. Teams to create shows come together as gigs anyway. We explored using such business models for software back in 2016:

https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributi...

But today, can’t you just use the Web multicasting for publishing/streaming the end result, or hosting it on some networks as a commodity hosting, and then production of the show would be funded using cryptocurrency?

How expensive would it be to acquire rights to a Netflix show that was canceled? Why would they not simply give it away for some equity in the new crowdfunded show? It would be like IPOing a show after piloting the first couple seasons. It would become a business model.

Why would this not work to bring back fan favorite shows, and create communities around them too? Why do we NEED centralized stuff like Netflix AT ALL?

I think you're significantly underestimating the amount of money that would need to be raised and overestimating the amount of people who would put their money where their mouth was and fund multiple seasons of these shows. Serenity, the Firefly movie, was sort of this, and it cost a lot for a two hour movie ($39M per Wikipedia) and didn't do a ton of extra revenue over that budget ($40.4M).

If there's something structurally preventing it, it's that the big studios and especially the "streaming as a loss leader" stuff players Amazon and Apple TV are making so many big-budget/high-production-value shows that audience expectations and standards are very high.

And reported budgets don't include marketing. The rule of thumb is that a reported $40M movie will have $40M spent on marketing, so if you hear a movie broke even, it really means that it lost an amount equivalent to its entire reported production budget.

So then just release episodes less frequently, like Moffat’s Sherlock, without sacrificing on production quality. Yeah the cast gets older but if the fans really wanted, they would click the button to recruit friends to pay recurring fees to it.

After all, I’m simply saying make a Netflix but where the amount of minutes you watch to the end determines how much you want to allocate from your payment that show. You have a chance to fix up the allocations before the end of the month, when they are committed.

The decision is taken out of the producers’ hands and instead of cancellation past some political threshold, results in slower episode velocity.

"Get paid more slowly for doing less work" doesn't sound appealing from the perspective of any of the people who would be doing the creative work.

Doing it a "netflix but pay based on what you watched" isn't the model you need, because the shows that are getting canceled today would need disproportionately larger payments per person. Since they have fewer viewers.

So unless those fewer viewers are willing to put up substantially more money, the people making the shows are going to keep looking for other options too.

(You also have big startup costs for this enterprise, if you're trying to do it as a platform vs kickstarting a single show. Think Quibi-style user-acquisition-problems, but not your pitch tp users isn't "short episodes on the go" it's "we pay creators with a different methodology.")

Ugh, Moffat's Sherlock, despite having very few episodes (about 12), was dead in the water halfway through because it turned into Moffat's trademark LOST-style garbage string along of ever less sensical unresolvable plot twists

It depends on the show of course, but there is a middle ground. For example, both The Good Place and Glow were canceled but their last season finales work well enough as series finales. I have no trouble recommending either of those. Of course, it's harder with some shows.

Unless Michael Schur was sugar coating it, The Good Place wasn't cancelled. They had reached the end of the story they wanted to tell and ended it.

Here's an article about it: https://netflixlife.com/2020/09/28/why-did-the-good-place-en.... I know some other sites report that it was cancelled, but even on the The Good Place Podcast, no one really talked like it was being cancelled versus reaching the end of the story (and not jumping the shark).

The Good Place wasn't cancelled to my knowledge, but it wasn't a Netflix produced show anyway, so I'm not sure it's relevant.

> The Good Place wasn't cancelled to my knowledge

Yes, it was.

> but it wasn't a Netflix produced show anyway

Which is orthogonal to the point of raising it as an example of how a cancelled show can end in a satisfying way.

If by cancelled you mean "ended", then it was cancelled. But the reporting at the time by the network and the creatives was that they decided in advance of writing and filming the fourth season that it would be the final season (and that the approximate length and arc of the entire show was worked out years prior to be around 50 episodes), and so the ending was written deliberately as a series finale, thus making it not an example of what the upthread people are talking about.

As the other commenter pointed out, The Good Place, like Schitt's Creek, had planned arcs that naturally concluded.

Many broadcast shows that are constantly on the bubble write their season finales to double as series finales in case they don't get renewed, see for example within just the past 2 seasons: Brooklyn 99 (cancelled but renewed by different network), Fresh off the Boat, Lucifer, Single Parents, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lethal Weapon, Star, The Orville (cancelled by Fox, picked up by Hulu, cancelled by Hulu but given final season pickup).

Makes sense. I had read that The Good Place was canceled which actually surprised me a bit as the finale seemed like a pretty natural ending. Of course, that's not to say that the showrunner would have turned down a longer run but the whole show is one of the better things I've watched of late and felt just about the right length.

The Good Place completely wraps up its story at the end of the 4th season. There's nowhere else to go there. It's very satisfying.

It's not an incomplete show like, the Santa Clarita Diet, for example (which I'm still mad at Netflix for cancelling, it was just getting really good and ended on a cliffhanger).

If The Good Place was 'cancelled' (which I'm pretty sure it wasn't), they were at least told in advance of the 4th season and were given the full season to finish its story.

> Netflix isn't the same medium as Cable/Broadcast.

No, it's a newer integrated content & delivery service that’s far less diversified as a whole business than the corporations that run traditional cable and broadcast, so the pressures on its content to succeed in driving metrics are even more intense.

> A 2 season show that was canned on a cliffhanger? Will NOT TOUCH.

A seasons show that got canned on cliffhanger wasn't getting touched in a way which would justify the cost, anyway; they are writing in off and stopping lighting money on fire when they are cancelling it.

They don't want to invest the kind of money they put into these series for something people already committed to the platform might try out, the expensive, heavily promoted at launch series need to be drivers of the decision to subscribe or stay subscribed (there’s plenty of stuff that’s cheaper, less promoted, and probably fine for them if it's essentially catalog filler, but that's not the series that get attention.) And if it's not doing that, throwing another (even truncated) season’s worth of money to slightly boost it's value as catalog filler might make some artistic sense, but it doesn't make a lot of business sense.

The problem is that currently their content is a mix of their own shows and a lot of successful and complete shows made by other networks. As they move to having more of their catalog be their own shows which stay around forever it increases the ratio of cancelled shows to complete shows which if not carefully managed I feel will damage their brand over time.

You didn't address the parents main point at all. It doesnt actually matter that few people watched until the end.

I can obviously only talk for myself but can say with confidence that if I'm watching a series which is cancelled without a conclusion, the likelihood of every watching another one by that publisher is miniscule at best.

It's definitely the worst business decision to do for Netflix. Either don't stop at a cliffhanger or do a final episode to bring it to an ending. If you decide not to anyway... Don't expect people to come back after getting burned once

Because at least I sure as hell won't be back

> I can obviously only talk for myself but can say with confidence that if I'm watching a series which is cancelled without a conclusion, the likelihood of every watching another one by that publisher is miniscule at best.

Every “publisher” in TV series does it. And most of them, including Netflix, also pick up things other houses have cancelled without a satisfying conclusion and extend them to provide one, or at least another chance at one.

The only substantive difference I see with Netflix is that they are taking far more shots at potential tentpole series than any other single outlet.

> Don't expect people to come back after getting burned once

I expect Netflix has a lot better behavioral data driving decisions than your “I can obviously only talk for myself” and then drawing conclusions from that to what is “definitely the worst business decision to do for Netflix” as if you were the whole market.

> That's rather the norm for shows; cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision.

I agree. But to my way of thinking, it's a decision with short-term and long-term business impact.

Longer term, it makes me less interested in starting to watch a series produced by that company, because of higher odds of ending up frustrated / disappointed. And it reduces the likelihood of me continuing to subscribe that service or recommend it to friends and family.

I also wonder what the impact on leaving a series unresolved has on its long-term syndication revenue.

Of course I'm just speculating. Depending on the actual numbers, perhaps those long-term downsides are completely acceptable.

> cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision. And cliffhangers are often a tactic used [for] audience retention

Series can very easily "jump-the-shark" and go on far longer than they should. There's a beauty to having something just "END" rather than go on until it needs to be cancelled because people are sick of it.

The Walking Dead, for example, just keeps going on and on and on. 9th+ season now, they're just re-cycling themes they've already covered 2 or 3 times. I guess they want a "sure-thing" but FFS, I wish they would place more value in trying out new things which, after all, is what really brings in the audiences when it works.

Sure, but there's middle ground.

The ideal would be for the people actually running the show to be able (and willing) to decide, "We've got enough material in us for two more seasons, then we're done. We want to wrap it up there." and the network/Netflix suits to say "OK, then you get two more seasons. Make 'em great."

Very slightly less ideal would be for decisions about whether there will be, for instance, a season 4 to be made at the beginning of season 3, so that the writers can design season 3 to be a final season and wrap up loose plot threads.

This is why I decided a few years ago to not ever even start watching new series. I hate the cliffhangers; I hate the one-episode-a-week shit; I hate the split seasons; I hate the waits even when the series is probably coming back. Best to wait for something like Breaking Bad to finish its entire run, and read how everyone liked it, including the ending, and then start watching the first episode. There is an overwhelming amount of good content from the past, more than I will ever be able to watch.

ALTHOUGH. Rick and Morty hooked me anyway. Love that show, and so pissed at how long it took to finish out this past season when it was delayed.

R&M has subplots but episodes are basically self-contained, so it tallies with your stated preferences really.

I though that episodic tv was on the way out and that arc's and mythology where more important.

Episodic tv takes skills to do properly, in this day and age. People now expect even side-characters to be fully fleshed out, and that’s difficult to do in a short amount of time. It’s also clear that a lot of “hot” showrunners, while great at building suspense and devising cliffhangers, are actually pretty bad at ending stories, so a more serialised approach allows them to kick the can down the road (e.g. Lost). After all, you become famous by generating interest and expectations, not by actually fulfilling them.

Put another way, what's ruining Netflix isn't the cancellations, it's the obsession with extremely long serialized soap operas over good episodes, miniseries and seasons.

Yes, but it’s a norm from the broadcast era. I think the premise is that Netflix has an opportunity to do things differently, because a satisfying show on a streaming platform is not dependent on reruns to reach new fans.

> Yes, but it’s a norm from the broadcast era.

You think there is less competition and pressure to perform now than when there three broadcast networks and no real competing video services?

Why would you assume I think that when the rest of my comment is about the difference in valuing the long tail of streaming vs broadcast content?

Agree with this. They can atleast produce 2-3 episodes in a season and let the series come to conclusion. There is no need for doing 10+ episodes.

> That's rather the norm for shows; cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision.

But if the series wasn't so long, each series would be commissioned as a whole and production in the can. That might not protect against unresolved cliffhangers, but it does mean you don't lose a story mid broadcast.

> cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision.

Some series get resurected after years...

Cold Feet series 6 in 2016 after 13 years...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Feet_(series_6)

> cancellation is a business decision, not a story decision

Of course, but I'm not sure you can entirely separate them. Story decisions impact customers, who impact the business.

I wouldn't think season-finale cliffhangers are a retention trick - they are just that, cliffhangers, something that any tv series does episode after episode. Usually it's the lack of cliffhanger at the end of a season that signals it's unlikely to come back. Showrunners want to wrap up stories if they can; when it doesn't happen, it's usually because the risk of cancellation was not clear to them until too late.

Totally. Think of the timeline! By the time the writers have written the cliffhander endeing to the season, the actors acted, the directors directed, and the footage cut down into an episode, and then the episode aired, the writer at the beginning of the pipeline is so far removed from the end product that, while there's some notion of having the next seasons, the failure of the show doesn't hinge on the writer. Bad writing can sink a show, but good writing doesn't mean that a show will succeed. Thus the writer can't really A/B test their script like you can for a good/bad email campaign/website copy.

It's definitely a retention trick, but it's not a bad thing usually. Every episode ends with a cliffhanger. The season finale usually shouldn't.

The cliffhanger is a relatively recent innovation that is for retention. Episodic tv was just that, episodic.

Soaps have used cliffhangers forever and they are the definition of episodic tv.

Exactly, if you take a look at HBO, they always announce either from the start that the production is a "Limited Series", or pre-announce the year for a final season. This gives the writing team the bandwidth to properly conclude all of the main plot lines.

Maybe this is because HBO values their content and hopes to syndicate it, whereas Netflix values their new subscriber counts.

> This gives the writing team the bandwidth to properly conclude all of the main plot lines.

I remember watching Lost (the TV series) and getting into this around Season 3, and I remember hearing them saying they were "waiting to start telling the ending of the story". I found a recent article [1] talking it in more detail:

> "There were all of these compelling mysteries and so we were saying, ‘We wanna have this stuff answered by the end of Season 1, this stuff answered by the end of Season 2, and then the show basically ends after about three years.’ That was the initial pitch, and they were not even hearing it. [....] they [ABC] were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show? So why would we end it? You don’t end shows that people are watching.’”

You can't keep dragging out the mysteries forever, you have to eventually resolve something. You also can't just keep introducing new ones forever, because it doesn't make sense. You can't keep showing the same flashbacks, and you just can't introduce major new chunks of history to people's backstories that have never been brought up before.

[1] https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/lost-ending-original-pla...

OMG! A three season arc, where everyone knows at the beginning that that's the extent of the series, is perfect. Netflix has the perfect platform to put up the money to have great talent and production sign on for a short run series like this, much like the Brits do.

I couldn't agree more!

Renewals are just as important to them. They are not one of those companies that relies on your apathy to keep subscribing.

Agree. Netflix should follow the Korean drama model if they know shows need to stop after a season or two.

Almost every korean drama is a one season story arc, and they're some of the most watched shows in the world.

I'd still take a bad season two of some of them though :D

Sometimes I feel like Netflix takes an idea that was pitched as a movie or 1-3 episode mini series and asks the creators to stretch it longer. If they aren't going to commit to finishing these things, write in arcs that wrap up enough that a second season is possible but not horribly annoying if its not.

This goes both ways. Writers clearly set things up that way in the hope this will put pressure for more episodes, but cliffhangers are just really bad writing done against rather than for the plot. Hopefully cliffhangers die thanks to streaming and the risk of non-renewal!

That said, I like how Netflix handled sense8. The plot was clearly getting more and more absurd and season 2 had a massive cliffhanger for season 3. Then it was cancelled - but still they produced a final somewhat absurd but satisfying movie-length final episode that tied all lose ends. That was probably a contract term and not perfect, but it worked out better than a third season or no end at all.

Good cliffhangers work with the plot, using a limit like a weekly release schedule or break between seasons to lengthen tension. I would say most American television is really bad at this and likes to create fake tension between episodes that otherwise has no impact on the plot.

No, cliffhangers are not bad writing. It's a literary technique like any other.

100% this, even if they did a 1-2 episode wrap up on cancellation it would alleviate most of the problems.

The problem with this is that the per-episode cost of a 1-2 show terminal microseason is much higher than the normal per episode cost, because you've got to pay people to come back for it and give up the opportunity for other work (or work around their replacement work, which also has costs.)

That's a good point, but I wonder what's the cost of leaving shows completely unfinished in the long run. I know that I'm very unlikely to start watching a show if I know that it never reaches a satisfying conclusion. This in turn might create some "dead inventory" for Netflix, shows that people are reluctant to start watching because they're unfinished.

Although there's cliffhanger and cliffhanger. Santa Clarita Diet for instance technically ends on a cliffhanger, but it's a last minute event that's supposed to introduce what they thought would be the next season. If you ignore the last scene basically every important plot thread up until that point is either wrapped up or at a status quo, so it's not such a terrible place to end a show.

An other recent example is The Boys: while the show did get renewed for a third season the ending of season 2 could easily be a show final, you'd just have to get rid of the last couple of scenes introducing a cliffhanger for season 3.

Conversely you have shows that clearly couldn't wrap their storyline in a satisfactory way before they were canceled. GLOW is unfortunately in this boat.

I loved the ending of Farscape, even before the mini-series wrap-up.

First, they wrapped up essentially every dangling plot-line. Everyone was safe, everyone was happy.

Then in the last minute of the show, out of no where, an alien no one had ever seen before swoops in and disintegrates the main characters.

"To be continued" flashes on the screen.

The series was canceled before this episode aired/was finished, and that's how they chose to go out. Could have just cut the last 30 seconds off the episode and called it a wrap, but nope.

>GLOW is unfortunately in this boat.

Don't really agree. No, you wouldn't choose to wrap-up the show that way but it's a fairly natural break point.

I agree that it's not the worst but it definitely leaves a lot of interpersonal drama unresolved. It makes the effective ending very bittersweet, which might indeed be fitting for this particular show.

An alternative solution here is to not cave and fund content in the old broadcast style of "run a show until it doesn't make money".

You could instead make intentional decisions to fund miniseries and content with clearly defined "endings".

I'd much rather have 6 episodes of a genuine story with a start/middle/end than two seasons of character development and a cliffhanger ending.

> You could instead make intentional decisions to fund miniseries and content with clearly defined "endings".

Netflix funds plenty of original miniseries, movies, comedy specials, and other close-ended content. But the high-risk, high-reward, could-be-tentpole series get an understandably-large share of media attention.

I guess if someone were to donate enough money for this it would be possible

Hard disagree.

First of all, most streaming shows are 10 episodes per season, 12 at most.

But as for the number of seasons, what's amazing about television is how deep and intimate your knowledge of the characters becomes. The kind of emotional depth and resonance you get with characters in the 4th and 5th season of a show is simply unparalleled -- we know their life histories, and the smallest of scenes can shake us with the amount of meaning they convey.

If you think of Mad Men or The Sopranos or The Americans or Breaking Bad -- my god, each season is better than the last because it's like they approach infinite richness. The last seasons get to levels none of the first seasons were able to.

Also, it's a huge rarity for shows to make it to 7–9 seasons. The ones that do are because they're hugely popular and people want to watch them. If Game of Thrones had still had books to work off of, I think pretty much everybody would have loved 3 or 4 more seasons.

I agree with your disagreement. If the goal is just to make an extended film around a single idea, then yes it has a high likelihood of burning out after 10-20 hours. If the goal is to set up a world that can act as a vehicle for commentary on the real world as it develops, then the only limiting factor is how long folks want to continue working on the show, as long as the audience is there. It's perfectly fine for something like a sitcom or sketch comedy show to have both long plot arcs as well as topical treatment of current events. And of course new storylines can be thought up over the course of a few years, as well as individual episodes that take creative detours.

Also we have to remember that until very recently, series were consumed one episode at a time, in day/week intervals, or even longer. This I think also added to the deep emotional experience you mention for long-running series: we've lost the anticipation factor, and as the cliché goes, the anticipation of something is often better than the thing itself. It was like this for decades; Netflix streaming was introduced only about 13 years ago, it's first in-house series, House of Cards, came out 7 years ago. I think it'll still take a while for the industry–both creatively and logistically–to catch up to the cultural change we've undergone with binge watching streaming series.

So true. I don't get why American TV shows always need to be ran to the ground.

Like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory are shows that should've gone past their 8th season. The Office should've never had those abysmal last two-three seasons. That '70s show should've never had those abysmal last three seasons.

I always like it when creators and producers recognize when a show has run its course. This is why we have good memories of Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld stood to make something crazy like 5 million per episode if they had done a 10th season but he knew the show had run its course and ended it on a high note (something, btw, that was a plot point on an earlier episode).

Same with Breaking Bad, they knew that they had a story to tell and that it didn't need to drag on and they delivered some of the finest 5 seasons of television drama that one could ever ask for.

I watched an interview with Damon Lindleof recently where he talked about how the ABC execs wanted and expected to draw out Lost as Long as they could. When they were trying to negotiate down the show, the execs thought they wanted more money. They wanted to do 10 seasons and 6 was the compromise.

It was mind boggling to them that the producers only wanted to do three seasons

Link: https://youtu.be/ej3ftLjmYlA

Great anecdote. Damon Lindleof is a terrible person to deliver it, though. Lost could have run for 20 seasons with no meaningful difference, since they never actually had any idea how to resolve the plot.

Maybe he thought he couldn't have gotten away with dancing around the resolution for 10 seasons?

And if LOST were only 3 seasons it might be remembered as a classic and not a train wreck.

So you're complaining about shows that shouldn't have lasted beyond season 8, and holding up as a good example a show that ran 5 seasons, while the article is about Netflix canceling shows after one or two seasons.

Seems like there's a gap there.

The old-school American network way of making (more) money was to run TV shows into the ground so that they had more episodes for syndication. HBO, Netflix, etc do not have that motivation.

Netflix payed $500m for the rights to steam seinfeld last year, HBO paid even more the Big Bang Theory.

If you make a show that people will mindlessly put on for hundreds of hours, that's still worth an utterly insane amount of money for a very long time.

More color on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_episodes

So true. I don't get why American TV shows always need to be ran to the ground.

It's a side effect of the weird way TV show syndication contracts (used to) work. Basically for various historic reasons you could charge cable networks more for showing re runs of shows with over 100 episodes than you could shows with less than 100 episodes.

So it often made long tern economic sense to push your show over that 100 episode line even if the last season or two where terrible and got terrible ratings on initial airing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_episodes

I think you have some rose-colored glasses with Seinfeld. The post Larry David seasons are not nearly as good. They tried to mimic his style with over the top storylines but didn't know how to weave them together like he does and none of the jokes really landed. Seriously go watch a random episode from season 9, it's not very good.

I recently watched the entire series again, you can see the show drop off last two seasons - and I commented on this before knowing about David leaving towards the end. But credit to them they didn't completely run it to the ground like most shows.

I personally really enjoyed the last two seasons of The Office US. Sure the transition was a bit dodgy but once it got it's stride it was enjoyable. Hell I'd even rate the final season as among the best overall.

Because running shows into the ground makes a lot of people a lot of money.

Agreed on the length of seasons for network prime-time shows.

However, that's not really what the article is about. The shows mentioned are 8-10 episodes per season (both the canceled shows and Stranger Things).

This is more about Netflix throwing shows against the wall so fast they never get to see if any of them stick. Which is silly - many of the best shows out there took a few seasons to hit their stride. Look at season rankings for Seinfeld or GoT - few people rank the first season of either as the best.

> This is more about Netflix throwing shows against the wall so fast they never get to see if any of them stick.

I think it's just the other side of the coin. Because they have no airtime limits, they can commission many more series than traditional networks used to; but they just don't want to keep them around for long if they think they are not working, because unlimited airtime does not mean unlimited funds.

In practice, I think some of the series this piece laments would never have been produced by networks. Would you be happier reading only one half of a story, or not even knowing the story existed at all? I think the answer can differ between different people.

> but they just don't want to keep them around for long if they think they are not working, because unlimited airtime does not mean unlimited funds.

This makes sense in the abstract, but watching season 1 of the The Office (US) suggests that if NBC had the same view, we wouldn't have one of the most popular long-term binge-watch shows, for which streaming services are paying $500mm now.

As the article mentions, Schitt's Creek apparently had a low-rated first season, but since the execs in charge didn't have the mindset you describe above, it survived long enough to become the award-winning more popular show it is now.

Netflix may not be doing anything wrong here, but if they're not careful, it may bite them hard in a few years as their reputation continues to grow.

>This is more about Netflix throwing shows against the wall so fast they never get to see if any of them stick

If they're good enough it will stick. See stranger things, house of cards, and orange is the new black for examples. The problem is that Netflix isn't very good at picking winners. They pay way more than anyone else for content and the results aren't there.

Haven't been able to get into Stranger Things but the other two shows started very strong. In fact, with House of Cards in particular, it was almost certainly never stronger than it was at the beginning.

I think it's just a reality that in the era of streaming very few people are going to stick out a mediocre series in the hopes that it has enough good bones that the showrunners will eventually do something with them.

Netflix made a lot of promises about what data would enable. There's very little indication it's helped Netflix to develop better shows.

Stranger Things is ironically a show that should have been just its first season.

It should have, but that show generates revenue outside of screen.

If they're good enough it will stick.

I'm arguing that isn't always true. Yes, some shows knock it out of the park in season 1. Other shows take a few seasons to really hit their stride.

It appears Netflix is taking a SV/VC approach to shows. Spend big, fail fast, and count on a small number of massive hits to succeed. While this may pad revenue in the short term, I'm not convinced it's the best long-term play. If subscribers get annoyed at short production runs and inconsistent programming, they leave and go to Disney or Hulu or Amazon.

Of course, I'm not in the industry at all, so I could be wrong. But, as a consumer, it is annoying to have Netflix push a few shows really hard, only to have them cancelled after 8 episodes.

If a show takes a few seasons to hit its stride, there's no way I'm going to start watching it and dedicate hours of my life just waiting for it to become good. Netflix + others are trying to bankroll TV series that will have a long lifetime in their archives, and a slow-opening series would work against that. Better to reap them sooner and spend the money elsewhere.

> See stranger things, house of cards, and orange is the new black for examples.

It's easier to stick when you are early in the game and the marketplace is less crowded. Hose of Cards got a lot of extra publicity for being the first.

The problem is that they don’t give them a chance to stick. One of my favorite shows, Tuca & Bertie, was released in May 2019 and canceled in July — less than three months later. By the time I’d watched it, it was already canceled. (Luckily, it’s since been picked up by Cartoon Network).

To be honest your examples were aired on TV some time ago where the normal season was 24 episodes (about 40-45 min long for seasons like Lost) and a half season 10 or 12.

Most of the new shows are between 8 and 12 episodes about an hour long.

I think you just stopped watching as many major network shows, as a quick look at NBC's current lineup still shows 15+ episode seasons is the norm.

but shorter due to commercial breaks.

I can't find any links for this off-hand, but I think the last time commercial time was increased was in the 1980s.

"One-hour" shows have been 42 minutes long on US TV for decades now.

I recall it changing when Star Trek: Voyager was on the air -- at least for Voyager.

Looking at Amazon Prime, seems the episode length changed from 46 minutes to 44 minutes going from Season 5 (1999) to Season 6 (2000).

(What I was remembering was 47 to 45, but this is a vague memory of a Usenet post I read twenty years ago.)

EDIT: Also, I should note that Voyager was on Fox. If you're talking about NBC specifically, I have no data.

Voyager was on UPN. Maybe in some areas where there was no UPN station, the local Fox station picked it up.

Ah, you're right. I forgot UPN even existed. Thanks.

Good point, it's likely different for different networks.

Most of them can be mass produced, like the usual crime story nonsense.

I don't think US series are too long. I think they're just badly planned. I prefer the approach you see in anime were a show is usually contained in a single season. If the show does really well they make another show that is effectively the next season. If it does poorly any fans it did get aren't left with an unfinished product.

For a planned multi season story arc Babylon 5 is the best example I can think of. The story arc was planned from the beginning and they stuck to the plan. The temptation to keep piling on more content to a successful show is huge.

For multi season story arcs I think it's important for Netflix or whoever is making the show to commit to the whole thing regardless of early ratings. I'm far more likely to take a chance on a new show if I know the story line will be completed. I don't want to start watching a show only to find out they cancelled it in the middle of the story.

I'd like to back up your theory with Breaking Bad. Perfect execution there too

Notable exception: The Wire.

5 seasons, each covering a specific topic (politics, drug dealing, media) beyond telling the story, and when they ran out of topics and told the entire story they had, they just wrapped it up... they could've easily milked it and made 5 more meaningless seasons but luckily didn't.

Season 5 was already becoming somewhat shaky on The Wire though (at least in my opinion, the serial killer plot was a bit too much). Still one of my favorite shows of all time.

I totally agree with you. I have a friend who is entirely the opposite. She's really into Masterpiece Treater type stuff and she's constantly complaining about 5 episode seasons and series that only last a few of those seasons.

>please don't string it out for 7, 8, 9 seasons

Especially historically on broadcast TV, there were a lot of incentives all around to continue to milk a cash cow with a core audience who would watch it for the next 20 years given the opportunity. In addition to the networks, I'm sure many of the actors and others involved in a long-running show realize they'll probably never have as good a meal ticket again. So screw artistic vision.

To recommend some good shows, Mr. Robot seemed to play out its episodes in a good amount of time (only had 4 seasons, 2 wasn't amazing but served its purpose). Another is Ozark, which has been pretty entertaining, and the show's Bateman has said the upcoming season 4 will be its last, so it's not going to be strung too long either.

I completely agree with you!

In theory.

In practice, I note that the UK version of The Office was 2 6-episode series plus 2 Christmas specials, for 14 episodes total, while the US remake ran for 201 episodes, and it's the US version that people seem to re-watch endlessly around the world, despite its very rough start.

To be fair there are outliers in the UK too. The Doctor Who series has been going on since 1968 with 861 episodes too. It’s probably worth ignoring the outliers here and focusing on the median show.

In the UK, Doctor Who is clearly an outlier. The other really long-running shows are soap operas like Eastenders or comedy panel shows.

But in the US, there seem to be an awful lot of outliers, and it's on the strength of those series that Netflix initially established their following: Friends, The Office, Park and Rec, Seinfeld, Community, The Walking Dead, The Blacklist, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, West Wing, That 70's Show, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, and I could keep going, honestly, for quite a while.

So yes, there's an extent to which 5 or 8 seasons is less common, but the goal for US shows has been 100 episodes for decades now, which is usually 5 seasons of 20+ episodes each.

If Netflix is adopting a more UK-like approach, that might result in better TV eventually, but it would be nice for creators to know they have to tell their story in 16 episodes rather than 100.

> t's the US version that people seem to re-watch endlessly

That's probably in no small part due to the fact that the US version is markedly more upbeat than the UK one. I honestly cannot watch the original anymore - despite being undoubtedly better written and better produced, it's just too bleak.

Probably because British actors don't want to commit to a 5 year contract.

Underrated comment, right here.

I think the dream for most US actors is to get signed to a popular long-running TV show. Guaranteed work and income, with options to negotiate higher pay every few years, what's not to love? Unless you're that even-more-rare talent who can jump to movies and make more on one film than a few years of TV. But many have tried to make that leap and ended up poorer for it.

I wonder sometimes whether Robert Sheehan thinks he made a good choice leaving Misfits. He seemed very certain at the time that he would be a movie superstar, but most of what I've seen him in since is other TV shows, like the recent Umbrella Academy.

But hey, Sheehan leaving opened a spot for Joseph Gilgun, who seems to be doing pretty okay too.

Miniseries would make a lot of things better. Keep the same budget, polish more and make a beautifully intense plot-line. Afterwards you feel fulfilled and have a sense of accomplishment.

It's the same with a lot of computer games. I remember i loved to binge when i was younger but when you are older than say mid twenties 50-70 hour games just annoy me. A good example of this is a game like Witcher 3, pretty cool game but just completely endless - frustrating for a person who also has a lot of work, family, friends etc. You never feel accomplished, its a stale feeling, and you don't remember half the plot because you don't have time to play 10 hours a day.

Miniseries are very expensive. Once you have your sets and art assets and actors and costumes you can crank out 2-10x as many hours of content at a much lower marginal cost.

I liked in that sense Unbelievable. Great miniseries.

On the other hand, I feel like modern TV shows aren’t long enough. By that I mean they cover ground too quickly and lack depth. I miss Battlestar Galactica which would hint and lead you on and develop things slowly over years.

Am I the only one who misses the 25 episode long seasons for shows like the X-Files? Sure it would have a string of episodes that weren’t great, but it gave more depth to the show than can be achieved with shorter seasons.

Yes, I have been watching Star Trek DS9. I'm noticing how the show started off in traditional Trek format, with 100% individual episodes that were geared for syndication. A few seasons in, you start to get the big story arcs, like the Dominion War... and that's when things really start to get good. BUT, it was cool every once in a while to have a side story that wasn't part of the arc. It gave a lot of variety and depth to the show. It kind of makes you feel like there's really a whole Trek universe. That not everybody was involved in the war, and that people still were trying to live their lives despite the war.

No.

While you can tell a tighter story in the shorter format a TV series for me is not only about the main Plot. It is also about building a rich world. Getting to know the characters besides the main plot, getting to know the side characters.

I think the biggest issue: there's more money behind "successful" US series compared to "successful" British. When a show gets big, more money is dumped on it. The issue with that goes beyond the standard creative problems that occur, it's also the management. When a show starts having budgets in the millions upon millions per episode, there are more eyes and thus, voices involved in the process that originally ignored said show when it was a "nobody". Eyes and voices that any logical person knows should be blind folded and gagged from having any sort of creative to artistic opinion. But, because their signatures are on the cheques, their word becomes law. From what I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong), that doesn't happen all that much with British shows as there's such a finite overall production budget and personnel to that market demographic compared to the US. There's budget increases to good shows, but it's no where near as drastic as what may happen to an American one.

I think that is what made Schitt's Creek work. Small creative circle close to the project.

From another Brit to balance out that anecdata - no they're not and I disagree.

I will grant though that when they try to replace main characters it can go to crap (Scrubs, sort of The Office, personally I also grew tired of Game of Thrones early on) but I'd much rather have more of a good thing than less

:) Turns out consumers have lots of diverse preferences.

I, for one, think shows are actually far too reluctant to remove main characters.

Absolutely. I just didn't want "seasons are too long" to come off as a nationwide feeling here. I can speak for myself :)

As a fellow Brit: what you're saying definitely applies to US network TV shows, but really not to the vast majority of what Netflix does. I'm not actually sure Netflix has any shows with the 22-24 episode seasons you'd see on US sitcoms.

Except, of course, that they've paid quite a lot of money to show popular US sitcoms with 22-24 episode seasons, since people tend to watch them over and over and over.

That's really the gap, I guess: They're benefitting from broadcast networks letting shows run 100+ episodes, but not creating additional shows with more than 16-20 episodes. It seems reductive.

I often feel shows that have a clean arc ending around season 4 or 5 are just about perfect length. I generally dislike 7-10 episode seasons though, I feel they're way to short.

And yeah, the biggest issue is that Netflix is giving shows only one season, and usually a cliffhanger. It also kills off a lot of shows before they have a chance to get good: Star Trek is notorious for getting good around season 3 of any given series. A lot of iconic television wouldn't have ever existed if it was cut off because of the quality of their first season.

I agree with this. I really like the way European shows often allow each season to be standalone, if it ends on that season the story is fully wrapped up. Broadchurch is a good example of this. If the show ended after season 1 it was great, season 2 was good as well and if there is no season 3, then its not an issue, no dangling plotlines. Bodyguard was like this too.

Nobel, a Norwegian show was like this as well, 1 season and it was great, no more was needed. If there is another season awesome but nothing is lost plotwise.

These are all shows I found via netflix.

Agreed about the length. 70s show and how I met your mother are good examples - they should have been at least 2-3 seasons shorter. Its painful to watch in the end.

100% agreed here. If a show only has 2-4 seasons, that's a selling point for me. Usually, around season 5, you can see the quality seriously drop as the writers have exhausted all their best ideas. Or else, new events must ever-escalate in intensity, and so the old seasons were sort of grounded and realistic, and the new seasons are zany adventures that don't fit at all.

Agreed. My favorite series of all time is the original, British version of The Office. While I believe it also did not have a planned, proper ending, it was only a few seasons.

I never enjoyed the US version as much and lost interest after a few seasons.

Despite incredible earlier seasons, have also failed to finish many others, including 24, House of Cards, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, etc. Just end it!

TV, especially broadcast TV, is not some high art form. It's a way to pass the hour or two before bed in exchange for watching some ads. People like the shows to keep going because it's not the storylines that pull them in, it's getting to live in this world that they like. So those seasons don't get replayed as much on streaming; so what.

You're describing a show like Modern Family. There's room for those types of shows. But something like The Capture is best left at 6 episodes and at best a couple seasons.

Shows like the walking dead grew into amazing shows but it took until 4th season.

Short series/seasons can limit what you can do. Which means by show 8, you know there will be a falling out that reaches climax at show 10.. cliff hanger.

Shows like glee hung on too long but it gave them space to make unexpected story lines... split the season in two..

I have to disagree.

TWD after S01 consisted entirely of a soap opera cast eternally getting lost in the same acre of forest. You could slip episodes and not miss a thing.

Maybe the writers attempted to tackle the now worn-out zombie theme by turning the show itself in to one. A meta-zombie, if you will.

It wasn’t really quite that bad. Seasons 1-4 each had quite distinct “survive zombies” scenarios. The season with Terminus was when it started to get dicey: it was quite close to season 2 in terms of theme (“survive zombies while lost in the wild”). Around the end of the first season with Alexandria (6?) is when it effectively stopped being (mainly) about surviving a zombie apocalypse and more about humans fighting each other with some love drama tossed in, oh and some zombies here and there.

I like that Netflix has a few 'limited series'. 8-10 episodes and the plot is complete. Great! There was one about an amazon murder/tribes/... Thing for which this just works perfectly. More story than a movie, no cliffhangers and no "monster of the week".

It's acclimation. Since the 70s, the BBC has produced series for a particular number of episodes and then dropped them. There are some exceptions, like Doctor Who, but that has been the practice. In the US, historically, we just keep running until the ratings tell us to quit.

Counter point: British television shows are too short!

My two all time favorite TV shows are Fawlty Towers and The Young Ones. Each consist of two 6 episode seasons. I really wish there were more. (though honestly, they did exactly what they set out to do, mic dropped, and the rest is history)

Series being too long isn't really related to the topic of discussion. And don't you sit there on your British Islands and tell me that The Misfits couldn't have enjoyed 2 or more seasons (provided that they show Rudy the door, that bloody bell knob).

As an American, I generally agree. Something I appreciate about some foreign TV is the idea that a season of a show (series in UK-speak) is a self-contained entity, and sometimes each season changes something significant about the show which keeps things interesting.

I am from the UK and think the opposite Your just used to the slower pace of the Uk media industry and to be blunt the gifted amateur pov.

There is no actual reason that Dr Who could not do longer seasons for example they had to commit to hiring better writers and to develop them.

> US series are too long.

My goto example for this: House of Cards. The original is so much less long-winded.

It could be a difference in assumptions. When I start watching a show, I generally don't imagine that I would have any reason to watch every single episode of every season. Rarely, I do. But more often I watch just an episode or two.

Totally agree. I end up watching BBC shows and think why the hell am I paying for neflix

Netflix original series have 8 to 10 episodes. Series with more are just on syndication on Netflix. But the main problem is Netflix kills shows after one or two seasons, leaving you with a cliffhanger.

You can just stop. I have watched a couple of shows with a good premise that then settled into a formula. So I just stopped watching after an enjoyable two or three episodes, or two seasons.

As an American, I agree. I would love to see more forethought go into the planning of series in the US. Plot it out for 1, 2 or 3 seasons of, say, 4 - 6 episodes and then just stop.

I think the “devolving into will they / won’t they” is orthogonal you the number of seasons. Many American shows are often set up around this plot line from the beginning—it’s a reflection of the vapid quality of American television in general (I blame the LA monoculture in particular). It’s not inherently a devolution; it’s just a “safe” plot line that most shows are unwilling to stray from. I have no doubt that a talented writer (who is willing to step outside of the Hollywood cookie cutter) could make a good show that lasts many seasons with many episodes per season provided the studio affords them the freedom to stray from the mold.

I can't commit upfront to that amount of time to something entirely unknown to me.

Why do you have to commit? Watch an episode or two. See if you like it. If not, move on.

They dont force you to watch new seasons... I usually stop after 5 seasons for series that I like quite a bit.

So true. Generally I prefer a single season. Something with a conclusion and without open ends.

This reminds me of a similar idea I came to a few years back. I noticed that 10-13 episode/year shows tended to be better than average, while 22-26 episode/year tended to be worse on average and have large numbers of garbage episodes. The second group is how traditional US shows were done in the days of classic TV, to be shown twice in a 52 week year.

It came to me a few years back after watching the remastered Star Trek TNG, later an early season of Game of Thrones. Even though TNG was given plenty of time to hit its stride and had some incredible episodes, another half were just crap. Meanwhile early GOT season would have ten decent episodes in a row. The difference in average quality was striking.

Of course, GOT had the benefit of being mostly written beforehand, similar to Babylon 5, one of the first series to break episodic containment.

TL;DR: TV show law - A dozen or so episodes per season is the limit of a writing team. Produce any more than that and they are guaranteed to be phoned-in filler.

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The UK version only lasted 2 seasons for a total of 14 episodes. It's very good, but I would argue the first 14 episodes of the US office are just as good. It's the later seasons that devolve into feel-good ho-hum sitcommery.

Apparently that is the case. I've not watched the US version, but I was jokingly referring to the most common axis of comparison that parent post falls along that I've experienced.

The point of LOST was to dangle more and more plot twists to create cliffhanger suspense every episode, not tell a story.

This is actually the exact opposite of what the LOST writers did. After season 1 or so, the show focused a lot more on relationships and the growth of its characters.

This ended up being the largest source of complaints about the show. Most of the original viewers watched it because they enjoyed the mysteries and cliffhangers and wanted them answered. However, the show moved completely away from that which led to so many of the complaints that the original questions were not being answered.

Writing about the finale, the NYT's (or may have been Time magazine at the time) TV critic wrote that people who watched the show through the lens of relationships between characters were generally fine with the way the show finished up. While those watching the show for the mysteries hated it, in part for the reason you say.

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