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Comment by r00fus | Hacker News Reader

Could it because the BBC (state owned television) effectively nurtures small series and lets them run for far longer than you would have in the US market, which suffers from both viewer and producer short attention span?

Essentially, not trying to have a hit for every show results in a far greater overall success rate.

If so, the analogy between the TV show market and startup scene could be instructive (i.e., nurtured small investments across the board rather than "go big or go home" every time).

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I think you've got it the wrong way round, actually. British shows typically run for a 6 episode series and then might go several years before a new series is produced. The Thick Of It has had 24 episodes since its inception in 2005, whereas its US adaption has already had 28 since 2012. Armando Ianucci (the writer) has straight up stated that he won't write any more The Thick Of It until he feels he has material worthy of new episodes.

I think it's the US networks putting pressure on writers to produce produce produce which ends up being the difference between the perfection of The Thick Of It and the greatness of Veep (in my opinion).

What's more, the British seem to have no qualms about simply ending a series when they think there's nothing more to add.

Consider Spaced: the cast and the audience loved it, but the story had come to a conclusion after the second series and the circumstances that originally gave birth to the ideas had changed, so they refused to consider another series.

Contrast this with American shows which typically only end if they get cancelled and where success is measured in how often you can get a new series funded.

There are plenty of American shows that should have been cancelled after a single season, but weren't because they were popular.

Stuff like Prison Break, Heroes. In fact Prison Break's season 1 had a very clear, obvious conclusion (they broke out) - so there was no clear path for the story to take after that. In Britain it would not have been picked up for a second series.

We share the same viewpoint. When I meant long-run I meant in terms of seasons, not in terms of episodes per season (e.g. Dr. Who).

The US corporate pressure to produce is definitely the problem. There is little counterbalance in the US, whereas in the UK the BBC allows writers like Ianucci freedom to do what they feel is right.

While there maybe some truth to that, it's also worth noting that we see the same with all our (British) terrestrial TV networks. Particularly channel 4, which has given us classics such as The IT Crowd, Father Ted, The Inbetweeners and Black Books.

Edit: and Brass Eye. How could I forgot Brass Eye when this topic is specifically about satire? Awesome show.

Let's regress this a level further - creating lots of small shows with potentially longer runs could result in a better talent pool (both actors/directors/producers), benefiting even private networks.

How often do BBC actors work with other networks? If there's any cross-pollination there is an argument that the BBC's reach goes beyond it's own productions.

It would be hard to dismiss BBC's influence on the format of British television since the BBC (channels 1 and 2) were originally the only TV channels on British TV. And, as you rightly pointed out, there's always going to be cross-pollination with TV talent as well. However I don't think it pays to look at the BBC as a unique model in the way that you are (ie "The BBC is different from American networks therefore it's the BBC that has uniquely shaped British TV"). I don't consider the fewer episodes per series/season model to be unique to Britain let alone a BBC invention. In America you tend to refer to these runs as "mini-series", but even them aside it's pretty common to have popular shows only run a dozen episodes a season.

I think the differences might be down to writing styles more than anything though. In the UK it's common to only have a 1 or 2 writers behind a popular series (or guest writers who handle individual episodes), where as in America you can have an entire team of writers. I would imagine having more writers might allow for a larger pool of ideas.

Do not overlook the feeder stream here: alternative standup comedy in the small-club format, and the giant mixing pot of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. There's a definite progression of free fringe show -> paid fringe show -> getting talent spotted and onto TV.

Since partial privatisation much of the BBC's output is actually commissioned through a maze of independents. It's not like the old days when Morcambe and Wise being poached to ITV was a national crisis.

I'll note that Channel 4 has a public service remit in its broadcast license, which, among other things, requires "demonstrating innovation, experiment and creativity".

Channel 5, otoh, does not, and we don't tend to get a whole lot of interesting new stuff from it - they like to play it very safe.

I think that has a lot to do with it.

Here in Oz we have the ABC which is the BBC equivalent in that too is state owned.

When it comes to all forms of locally grown TV, the ABC has a much better record of creating quality programs, when compared to the three major private broadcasters.

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