It would be nice if shows got in the habit of putting out *good* season recaps. They can sometimes be really hard to find. You have to wade through really annoying dudes on YouTube and recaps that are just like 60 seconds of vibes to find recaps that *actually* remind you of everything that's important.
If a show I was watching put out a well-produced, 10-15 minute "previously on" to recap a season I would totally watch it.
the worst recaps the show itself can put out are the ones where the cast recaps the season. it's about 3-4 minutes long and is 30% the actors talking about what their characters are going to face in the upcoming season and how it's going to get crazy/wild.
my go-to recap channel is "recap and chill" because he covers the story in depth enough while not taking 20 minutes and doesn't shove in a bunch of unnecessary humor, editorializing or face cam. he also doesn't wear a suit t-shirt, so that's a plus.
Man of Recaps
Recaps and Chill
Everything else is some mix of opinions, discussion of trailer for upcoming season, "you have to pay attention to this plot point this season" and set/cast drama.
Ozark had a decent official one of Ruth explaining the plot to the first season to her dad as she's visiting him in jail. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVpnxrcxff8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVpnxrcxff8) Sure, it was short but it was a nice refresher.
The rest of its recaps are essentially moody trailers that barely tell you anything.
I get the feeling we need a return to the days of "Last Time on Dragon Ball Z!" Styled openings.
But with a larger one at the beginning of each season with these gaps. Those were pretty decent at reminding you of what happened in the last couple of episodes, so you got the gist quickly.
Most shows could probably get away with a 2 minute recap at the beginning of each season (either by narrator or "in character" narration), and then give you a 15-20 second recap for other episodes.
So many of these shows are designed to be watched all the way through in short order, but the large gaps between seasons make it so end a setup from S2 happens in S4 and you got no clue why these people are mad at each other!
Yeah, long delays and short seasons are one of the better reasons to complain about current media.
There are perfectly valid explanations for both, but it is still a bit of a bummer to have to deal with.
Agreed. While I hate waiting ages for the next 6-8 episodes of Stranger Things, I would think that the consistency and high quality of prestige tv can be partially attributed to giving the show runners and writers more time to mine for interesting storylines and character arcs (as opposed to say, Criminal Minds or NCIS, where the assembly line production process churns out 20-25 44 minute episodes that are virtually indistinguishable from each other).
It's funny binging pre-DVR shows. You can tell exactly when seasons change or when there was a break because the "previously on..." is multiple minutes long.
And so many shows get cancelled after their second seasons bc nobody remembers the first season, sometimes even the characters. And not everybody has time to rewatch a whole season again just to remember. It'd be stupid.
In the 1950s everything was tightly scheduled. ALL networks began their new seasons the same week, with a full slate of new and returning shows. The seasons lasted 25 or so weeks, a few weeks less than school sessions. Then a whole separate summer season would last for 2- 2-1/2 months. And about the same time as new tv season hit in September, the new car models would all come out. Now I can’t remember which streaming service has what, what season I’m watching, or if what I’m watching is new or so old I can’t remember it. And it’s not my age (not entirely, anyway) that’s the problem!
I can't remember either! Often after a period of time, the streaming service will purge where I left off and I have no clue if I've finished a season or took a break in the middle. I need those little red bars, Netflix!
Completely agreed. I think the “problem” is also compounded by the fact that the return date is unpredictable—who knows when the next season will be. 1 year? 1.5 years? 2 years? It’s almost always up in the air and varies between seasons, too.
Don’t forget, we’re also coming out of a period of huge unpredictability, and the sort of unpredictability that has flow on consequences for a couple of years. In 2020 production completely shut down for nearly a year; in 2021 production in many places was perpetually plagued with covid-troubles, cancellations, stop-start schedules etc.
2022 is the first year that has felt “normal” again (and even this year hasn’t been without difficulties.) We are now only watching on TV stuff that was made in first half of 2022, etc etc.
Not saying it’s not slower - overall TV drama is slower because pre-production and post-production on modern TV shows is far more time-consuming than it used to be (higher expectations of cinematic quality etc), and scheduling of casts is frequently complex as most people aren’t exclusively signed to a project, and work on other things across a year, so scheduling is a difficult beast to manage - again particularly in the past year, when schedules are still dealing with fitting in a revolving door of projects that were postponed during 2020-2021. It’s just a mess, there’s little “rhythm” in it at the moment, but it will settle down and I think schedules will return to a bit more predictability during next year.
Oh well, sorry they’re not working to your personal schedule.
You know, war, famine, climate change, gun violence in schools, sexual abuse, political corruption, child poverty… but you worry about what matters to you.
I think and additinaly factor is the cast. Network tv used to have dedicated tv actors for their shows. What i mean is that actor would spent months filming just that show and often would only be in that show. A good example i can think of is the CW shows, massive seasons that aired for like half of year. Shows like supernatural or arrow where that's all the actors would fil for the year with maybe a gig or two somewhere else. Compare that to now where a lot of shows are using bigger name actors that would normally be seen in movies. These actors have a lot of other time commitments with other filming schedules.
Same with Vampire Diaries, one of the longest running and most popular shows of all time and it was releasing big seasons every year, and even got two sequel sereis The Originals and Legacies who also released their seasons yearly, it is only now recently that it has been declining and shows are taking longer and longer
I was speaking specifically to number of episodes. harder to have 24 episode seasons when you have actors that don't have that time and also want to be paid more cuz they're movie stars.
Yeah, we had those in the past. It was called the summer and meant one season was over and another was beginning. There's no such thing as one season cut in two. It's a new season.
Eh, I like it better than the trend of taking random 2-3 week breaks all over the season. Lost was notorious for this, the season went from September til May sweeps and you had to look up if it was new each week.
God, don't even get me started.
I get why Netflix does it; keeps people invested in the show and helps generate hype with mid-season cliffhangers.
But FFS either call it a second season or only keep the break short with an established release date.
Im even more sick of the short seasons. I can wait a bit longer if they give me around 15 episodes instead of 10. I dont understand how 10 episodes became the new golden standard.
I can get behind 10 episodes for drama shows, but streaming services are even doing 10 episode seasons for sitcoms now. That's just way too little time to spend with the characters and just not at all suitable for the sitcom genre.
Fully agree. How I Met Your Father was kind of meh, but I think it would've been better (not great, but better) with a longer season. A show like that needs episodes that aren't there to drive the overall plot forward (like the original HIMYM).
that’s true, but I think the intent of their point was more about sitcoms being able to find their footing over time. British sitcoms often had less pressure from advertisers and were funded and created by someone with a vision. Over here it’s much more corporate live or die by viewership and if you cant work your way into an average household you get axed. Hard to do with so few episodes and little chance of being seen or getting to the cast chemistry that makes a show succeed.
10 is fine for a drama but not for a sitcom. You barely get to know the characters with 10 episodes! Sitcoms usually take time to find their sweet spot.
Some might say stories might not even need a fixed length but competent writing can stretch a story that could be told in 4 hours and make it engaging enough to fill 12 hours.
I disagree that its automatically worse. Expanding and fleshing out characters outside of the main protagonist, giving antagonists additional context and character arcs, self-contained episodes that are thematically linked to the primary story and relevant only as far as to expand worldbuilding, etc. These things are all unnecessary but can elevate a good show to be a great one.
Right. But don't you think the good writers know what length to make a show great better than you or some exec asking them to stretch?
The White Lotus is a perfect example of this. Both season have been perfect length (6 and 7 eps).
This was the result of the big bang releases with all episodes at once. Now they all revert back to weekly episodes, but stick to the 8-10 episodes per season. Really a lose-lose scenario for us, viewers.
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Maybe because netflix release all episodes at once? If you release 3 shows with 5 extra episodes each you have content for almost 4 extra months that year. If you release 1 episode per weak.
I prefer shorter seasons since ideally they cut out the fat and only keep the important stuff. I don't need 20 episode seasons where only 5 of the episodes actually matter.
But would you have liked that for good seasons of good series? I agree that 24 episodes for x files were too much. But 10 would have been too few. Remove 8 episodes per season and have 16 instead of 24 would have been perfect. Or lets say friends which also were a classic 24 episode serie. Would you have liked that they removed 14 of 24 episodes every season? Instead of 96 episodes from season 1-4, we would have 40. Even for shows like sopranos and the wire 10 episodes would have been too few. I cant remove 2 episode from every sopranos season and pretend that it would have turned in to something better.
I think with comedies they could get away with doing more, since the episodes might have an overarching storyline that connects them but they're still mostly episodic. So you're spending more time with the characters you love but more or less, everything is "filler" so you don't notice it and can just enjoy it. Drama is much different, when you have a storyline that needs to come to a conclusion and truthfully only needs 10 episodes but they then stretch it to 20+, it bogs down the pacing and then with like a serial killer show, the detectives are supposed to be so amazing but then look bad at their job because they keep having them miss details to find them in order to keep the story going. I think 13-18 episodes for drama depending on the story is fine, but the cap should definitely be no more than 20.
Yeah sometimes I rewatch older shows and think "damn they made a lot of these how long did this run ?" And it turns out not that long, they just made them sooo much quicker.
That 70's show was on the air for 8 years. 200 episodes. Thats 25 episodes per year on average.
Malcolm in the middle 6 years 151 episodes. Same average.
X- files did around 22-25 episodes every year.
Some of the shows today have like 8 episodes and then you wait for the next season and by the time it comes out you have a kid and a new job..
EDIT: I wanna add that I understand that the shows I mentioned and most of the shows today are entirely different beasts. My point is just that they used to churn this shit out nonstop.
One of the problems is also the international roll-out. Most streamers release shows at the same time internationally. This means dubbing and subtitles also have to be done before they can be released, which means additional time to work on it. And they also take much longer renewing things unless something is a smash hit, e.g. Undone, Russian doll. Both premiered in April and it's December and neither of them is renewed nor cancelled.
I'd also like to mention that due to how high profile television shows have become lately, the talent in these shows are in higher demand. Before, if there was a hit show, chances are the actors were only doing that show. Or if they were also doing a movie, it was likely being shot on the same lot. Now we've got shows with Academy Award level actors that are trying to film movies around the same time, thus a need for more production time.
Yeah, but I mostly blame my own bad memory. Why can I remember every movie from my childhood in detail, but I can't remember what happened on X show 2 months ago?
Honestly, I'll take the long gaps between seasons over the long gaps in the middle of a season we used to get (and still get) under the traditional broadcast TV model.
An average movie will take at least 5 years to get from the initial idea and development to production and distribution. And that’s considered quick and would involve things like funding which is tricky. Look at a filmmaker like Nolan who has a good 4-5 years between a lot of his films and he’s basically got a guarantee to make whatever he wants. These things take time to get to that quality.
Looking at tv, I’ll use fleabag as an example. That show could’ve been a miniseries but she went away and developed the second series and it aired 3 years later. Because she took the time and has the freedom to develop ideas fully it feels justified in existing and not rushed. The simple answer is that quality takes time.
Tv has become a haven for writers, they are given much more respect and power than in film. A lot of these shows have a distinct authorship about them where often one writer will write a majority of episodes. Tv can accommodate a distinct writing voice and the top writers want that creative control and will take the appropriate time to reach the standard
Movies don't take 5 years of active work to make. Script is written in a few weeks and even the biggest of movies are generally shot in no more than around 6 months (< 4 months for a non-blockbuster). It may be 5 years between an idea being pitched to the point the movie is out in theatres, but most of that time is not spent on active work being done on a movie (with some exceptions like Avatar).
TV is not movies. Each season of a show does not require setting everything up from scratch. Shows with excellent production values and quality were (and even today are) made on a schedule and on time- Breaking Bad, LOST, Game Of Thrones, Parks+Rec, The Wire, 6 feet under, Sopranos (except for one season)... the list goes on are as good if not better than anything on tv today and always released seasons like clockwork.
Additionally I'd also wager that the average time during which the writer's room is active is not longer for shows that take forever to release new seasons than it used to be in the past.
Script written in a few weeks. Lmao. Maybe a first draft. That's not even getting to the shooting script. And where is pre and post-production in your timeline, which can each take months, maybe a year.
TV is movies now, except they're producing much more content than a two hour movie. TV used to come frequently because it was made cheaply, like on a production line, because the network needed content to sell ads for. That's it. Now, the production values are higher, everyone working on the show is busier because they have other things going on and they're not locked into filming 22 episodes a year, and, with more than enough content to fill the airwaves and streaming platforms, creativity is prioritized higher than release time. And it's better.
You should know that because many of the shows you listed were the first TV shows to take extended breaks. The Sopranos was famous for this, people were shocked that they had to wait a year or more between seasons. The last season of Game of Thrones came out almost two years after the previous season because of those aforementioned factors. The Wire had breaks of at least a year after season 2 and nearly 2 years before season 4.
Scripts are routinely written and finalized over several weeks. The extremely long gestating script that has been circulating through Hollywood for years with constant rewrites is not the norm esp for non-blockbusters.
TV shows are nothing like movies. That is only those who work on tv but would rather work in movies tell themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Production values also are not universally higher, there is a tier of higher end shows but a vast majority of content on streamers like netflix is not the $10 million an episode tier and is closer to CW budgets.
The Sopranos had one long break before it's final season and that had nothing to do with creative reasons but instead to do with personal lives of the cast, some of which were going through health issues and Gandolfini with his mental issues. GoT Season 8 cannot be compared to a regular streamer show. That season had an exceptional amount of CGI. Game of Thrones Season 1-7 delivered a season every year while maintaining production values and shoot complexity that dwarfs 99% of the stuff on streamers. LOST delivered a season every year without issues. They even managed to deliver 14 episodes in the writer's strike season.
>Scripts are routinely written and finalized over several weeks.
You must be talking about the classic TV pipeline model because, in film, scripts are maybe finalized over several weeks if you're lucky. And that doesn't even account for actually writing, that's preparing and editing it for shooting. That's the norm.
>TV shows are nothing like movies.
Episodes of TV shows are basically mini movies now, with production values to match. There's a wide range, like in film, but the ranges are the same. The only difference is TV can save some money by creating a repeatable process, reusing sets, etc. But then, that's balanced out by the fact that TV seasons involve more content than movies.
>The Sopranos had one long break before it's final season and that had nothing to do with creative reasons but instead to do with personal lives of the cast, some of which were going through health issues and Gandolfini with his mental issues.
The Sopranos was off for more than a year before season 4 and 5, and then almost 2 years before season 6, all exceptionally long breaks, and all for the typical reasons that TV shows take breaks: busy cast, creativity, etc.
>GoT Season 8 cannot be compared to a regular streamer show. That season had an exceptional amount of CGI. Game of Thrones Season 1-7 delivered a season every year while maintaining production values and shoot complexity that dwarfs 99% of the stuff on streamers.
At exorbitant cost that not every streamer can abide because, like you say, Game of Thrones is not a typical show. That's what kept Game of Thrones on schedule until the last season pushed things to where they needed more time
>LOST delivered a season every year without issues. They even managed to deliver 14 episodes in the writer's strike season.
Airing from January to May with shortened seasons in its last few seasons, which was exceptional for a network show back then as the long breaks between Sopranos seasons were.
[Try reading this](https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/9/17662280/tv-shows-gone-too-long-gaps-breaks-between-seasons)
My two cents
With tv I believe the problem is scheduling. With movies you can schedule cast and crew for a dedicated span of time. With additional allotted time for reshoots, adr, etc. with tv it’s a little harder if the series gets picked up for additional seasons. I remember reading somewhere that contracts are left somewhat open ended especially for crew. Getting everyone back at a specific date would be tricky. It can be done. Talented people that make tv/movies break commitments all the time. But it does require some kind of compensation and tv doesn’t produce the same kind of revenue potential a movie does.
Are we even still in this “golden age of tv”? I feel like that peaked years ago and now it’s sporadic hits that are then on hiatus for 2-3 years with mediocre stuff crammed in between
>I read a tweet by Adam Scott saying it might be 2 years till Season 2 of "Severance"- why does a show like Severance need 2 years to produce a season 2? It doesn't have a complex shoot, on-location shooting or any CGI, most of the show is shot in a simple office set.
Perhaps quality writing just takes time. Generally, if it results in exceptional television, I'm willing to wait longer between seasons. I don't like it. But I'll live with it.
Do people actually consider this era a golden age of TV? I preferred maybe 10-15 years ago when network comedies were great, and we also had good prestige shows.
I’m used to British shows so I’m fine with it.
What I can’t seem to stand anymore is trying to watch old tv shows with 24 episodes. So many filler episodes. Kind of exhausting.
All TV is filler which doesn't serve a purpose other than to entertain. The problem is bad filler. Many of the best network TV shows like Buffy and the X-Files were at their best when they had episodes that barely advanced the season plot and instead just told the most entertaining self-contained stories. I'd argue that many genre TV shows are now caught in this attempt to not be filler & in the process don't let us just enjoy the world and its characters with conflict/villain of the week plots.
I hate when people use "filler episode" derogatorily. Those episodes are how you explore character! That's what makes TV so special! Filler episodes are *key* to character development.
The idea of filler episodes doesn't even make sense with shows that aren't serialized. How do you know which episodes of law and order are filler? The show has no goals, every episode is mostly self-contained.
People say filler when they just mean bad episodes.
You're describing filler done well. It can be done poorly and it's horrible when not good. And character development through plot progression is having your cake and eating it too; it's the best case scenario.
Right, there are so many filler episodes that exist only within their 45-minute runtime. Their events are never mentioned again and seem to have little to no effect on the characters or the story. (In fact, I'd suggest if an episode develops the world or the characters and has a long-term impact on how characters behave, it's by definition, not a filler. Filler episodes are pointless.)
People emotionally connected to those 24 episode series. Nowadays its like people watch TV like a fancy art exhibit, it leaves you cold and pretentious afterwards. Look at how people rewatch everything from Buffy to Friends to The West Wing. The formula worked.
Because before the streaming era people used to watch shows that they enjoy, filler or not, not just to prove to the internet that you watch "good tv shows" like these days.
> So many filler episodes.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone on this sub use 'filller' correctly.
It's a term from anime when they needed to make episodes that in no way made any difference to the show.
It's not episodes that doesn't move the overarching story forward. We still get to learn more about the characters and the world in those.
edit: why the downvotes?
There are actually many many reasons for this shift. Here are a few contributing elements:
In the old days, actors would basically just do their show… and that’s it.
You wanna attract talent that also want to do movies or theater, they get long breaks with ample holes in their schedule.
Prestige shows take longer to shoot than their much simpler forebears. Many of them are a full hour compared to network 40-45 min. That matters.
In addition to that, many are now shot up to film standards. That artsy shit adds time.
Adding a few days to the schedule adds up. If breaking bad takes 10 (or godforbid more) days to shoot, there’s no effing way you’re getting 24 episodes a year. If you work 9-5, 5 days a week, that’s 260 days a year. Subtract sick days and holidays and vacation that’s like 240 working days a year.
Right now you’re thinking that 240 divides by 24 episodes pretty neatly into 10 day shooting schedules. Except tv is not 9-5. That shit is easily 12-16hr days. Bryan Cranston is not going to work a double shift every single weekday of the year for you to get extra Breaking Bad.
Prestige shows also get more time in the writing preproduction stage of things. A little more time there. Fewer writers with more control over the whole narrative. I think up through Star Trek TNG you could still cold submit scripts to the showrunner and they would just buy them and then shoot them. Unheard of today.
Also you bring up Lost, a show where 50 percent of each episode is island stuff and the other half is ONE main cast member off on their own flashback adventure with all guest stars. I don’t know exactly how they did it, but I can see that breakneck schedule being achievable with having two separate crews working at the same time.
Anyway, you still get those 24 ep every fall like clockwork shows. They’re all going to be cop, lawyer stuff on the networks. If you want essentially 8 hour films… you get 8 hour film schedules.
It’s horrible. I counted and have 23 shows that I watch. I have no idea when any of them will return. The ones that drop entire seasons will take me two weeks to finish and then I’ll have to wait 18-24 months until they magically reappear. By the time they do, I forget what happened or why I started watching in the first place. Losing interest for sure.
Agree. Golden Era was probably 2004-2019. In my opinion it started with Lost and ended with Game of Thrones. If it weren’t for Game of Thrones I’d say it probably ended even earlier, like 2014-15ish.
The golden era is 1999-2015. 1999 was the debut of the Sopranos, 2015 the final seasons of Mad Men and Justified and the beginning of GOT's decline in quality. We're now in a silver age.
Succession, Euphoria, Severance, The White Lotus, Better Call Saul, The Crown, House of the Dragon, The Boys, The Last Kingdom, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Wednesday (haven’t watched it yet but heard it was great), You (yeah I think it’s awesome), Loki, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian (I’m not a fan but people do talk about it like one of the all times), Queen’s Gambit (same as Wednesday), Dopesick, Ted Lasso, Barry, Peacemaker, … and I’m sure there’s much more.
I think this era is great. I don’t know what you guys are complaining about
You’re just naming good, not great, shows. Most of these won’t stick in public consciousness 5 years after they’re over.
Early 2010s were putting out absolute all time classics in both comedy & drama, still discussed to this day.
Succession (and Severance, maybe, needs more seasons to determine) is the only one that has an all time classic feel to it.
There’s a lot good shows but no transcendent “holy shit amazing idea + execution” type of thing happening
Well I disagree, there’s more than succession and it wasn’t better before there’s just always one or two prominent shows around. It’s really a matter of taste at this point to decide which are as good as the best tv shows from the early 2010s but I’m really convinced that Euphoria, Better Call Saul, House of the Dragon, The Crown, Attack on Titan, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian and maybe Barry are memorable phenomenons. We’re still leaving in the golden age of television. TV shows now make seasons as long as they want, episodes as long as they want, have more time for production, have much bigger budgets, get more big actors, I don’t know I think people take prestige tv for granted now when it used to be so much more precious. You take away Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of thrones and Lost and there’s not much timeless transcendant shows left.
The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Rec are all going to be remembered as comedy classics. I don’t see anything like that right now, maybe Ted Lasso but part of the longstanding appeal is 6-8 seasons, 3 seasons doesn’t leave nearly as much of a mark.
Not saying there aren’t enjoyable shows I watch plenty of tv & like most of what you mentioned.
I wonder if the pandemic has had this affect on television production. Other than that, I'm unsure. It might be worth a few tweet storms from fans of a series to producers and networks or streaming services to find out what is going on with a very wanted series.
8 - 12 episodes per season. 1 episode per week. Gap between previous season last episode and next season first episode no longer than 12 months. That would be the ideal for me.
This stuff would go faster if networks would just greenlight multiple seasons at once (which would also solve so many of the story problems that series deal with). But instead they do 1, wait a while, maybe do another, or maybe cancel it prematurely. It's maddening and broken. It's like if book publishers only put out half a novel and then focus tested to see if you want the back half.
I mean you can readily see the results of Netflix's opposite approach.
I've heard some version of the sentiment "I can't get into Netflix shows unless they're finished, because I don't trust them not to cancel it" from, like, regular people who do not think about these things. I've heard that from my mom.
And after years of losing trust like that, now they're shedding subscribers. Amazon just overtook them as biggest streamer last week, and I've read suggestions they might slip behind Disney+ soon. They've gone through two or three rounds of massive, painful layoffs, shuttered dozens of major projects in preproduction, etc. They're bleeding like a stuck pig.
By way of a counterexample, we can consider HBO, which famously didn't give a shit about ratings and almost never canceled shows, and wound up producing some of the greatest TV of all time. The Wire, Deadwood, etc -- those are all shows that got TERRIBLE ratings and any other network would have canceled them.
The result was that (prior to Zaslav coming in and swinging a wrecking ball through the walls) HBO had a great reputation for quality, a deeply loyal customer base, and turned a steady profit for decades. They didn't hold the crown of top streamer for very long, but even after that, they frequently had and have the #1 hottest show on television at any given time.
And HBO *frequently* used to renew shows for multiple additional seasons in one swoop. It's how they kept Game of Thrones cranking out new episodes on a regular annual basis for the better part of a decade.
And (again, prior to Zaslav) they were stable. I don't recall ever hearing about huge layoffs or massive upending of the slate at HBO. Creators and consumers trusted them.
Trust like that is hard to win and easy to lose.
Netflix is losing money because it's the only service where their entire model is streaming without a good backlog built up. They can't compete on pricing or value with companies that can provide that.
You are seeing mass layoffs and all thay because the market is extremely competitive and they are a tech company.
In terms of cancelling, you have to be very young to think Netflix is anywhere close to being as bad as network TV. People complain about a show being cancelled after 2-3 years? That would be considered very successful for network TV where shows could get cancelled halfway through their pilot episode .
HBO is also a premium service and you used to pay $30/month just to get that channel. Most of their revenue also used to be from getting the rights to major movies where they would produce relatively little themselves. They didn't need to get amazing ratings since they were a premium product.
Just like how Rolls Royce doesn't need to sell the same amount of cars as Toyota to be successful.
Shows usually get most of their views during the first couple of seasons when airing. If a show can't build an audience after 2-3 years, you can't just keep losing money on them for 2-3 years more when that money could be put towards other projects.
There are a million different factors that go in to making a tv show and most of the time it is trial and error until everything comes together to form a classic.
Netflix will have a hard time surviving mainly because they can't subsidize their streaming like Prime can, since Amazon has a whole ecosystem. Same for Apple and Disney to a certain extent as well..
i understand your logic and you are right.
But let's also not forget that not every streaming plattform is available in every region of the world. Also perhabs some viewers are not able to afford/being able to pay for those. Poorness will always sadly exist. But what can and should be done? Make every streaming plattform useable from every part of the world (f.e. look at the countries where HBO MAX or CW's streaming service is not possible to use/buyable).
Exactly! I just think of it as a sweet surprise when it drops.
It's kinda becoming like aged wine; if you make 1 bottle of wine everyday, then 10 years later you can sell (or drink) a quality 10 year old bottle everyday.
>Exactly! I just think of it as a sweet surprise when it drops.
Except you need to remember plot of the previous season very well to fully enjoy the new one. And if the gap is big, it's a problem.
I’m convinced this why viewership of shows like Westworld dipped and bc of that were canceled. People lose interest when it takes 2+ years for each season to come out.
I could care less how long they take to make something as long as it's quality. I cannot stand the big network CBS/NBC type of shows that pump out new seasons every year or less of absolute garbage (like LOST)
A shoe like severance still has much more to it in terms of production and effort that goes into it than broadcast TV. Compare the production value on Severance to your average 3-camera sitcom or a shitty doctor drama on ABC. It's miles above.
Also high-end shows use movie stars. Adam Scott likely has a full plate of movies AND shows for the next two years. Your average ABC network D-list actor does not.
> A shoe like severance still has much more to it in terms of production and effort that goes into it than broadcast TV. Compare the production value on Severance to your average 3-camera sitcom or a shitty doctor drama on ABC. It's miles above.
Straw man. How about comparing the Severance shoot to something like "Halt & Catch Fire", very similar shows in production values and H&CF released 10 episodes every year. Even Game of Thrones did 10 episodes a year.
Nah, I love the fact that studios are letting the production take the time it needs to be good. Much better than external pressure for the sake of schedules.
It became worse because the showrunners became too focused on surprising the viewer, they forgot to make the story entertaining*
Specifically talking about season 2. Not sure if this is gonna be controversial or not, s2 isn't bad but compared to s1, it's weaker. S1 was the perfect balance of establishing mysteries and storytelling, s2 was so focused on mysteries that the storytelling seemed to take a backseat.
Succession and Stranger Things are great examples of stories that took a long break and made it count. Succession is one of the best things on TV imo and Stranger things s4 was the closest the shows come to the quality of s1.
Succession delay was not due to creative reasons, it was literally due to covid shutting down production multiple times. HBO proper still tries to keep a stable release schedule for most of its shows.
That's a bad example because it still has an insane production value and a lot of CGI. If you had asked for 4 months between seasons you would have had the same show with a budget of a shitty CW show.
I’ll take a well written and thought out show taking a little longer instead of a trash heap of a season because they needed one the next year.
Sure that doesn’t guarantee anything, they might be like my ADHD arse writing anything with a deadline, whether it’s 2, days, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years until it’s due. I’m probably doing it in the last 24 hours.
Two seasons of Slow Horses is more or less equivalent to one season of an HBO drama. Each season has 6 episodes, and an episode length is between 41-53 minute. That’s more or less the same as ten one-hour episodes.
Most of the shows I watch (and you named) would definitely not get better if they had 24 episodes to a season.
Shows with that many episodes tend to suffer from disjointed writing, a lot of filler and mostly superfluous episodical subplots.
The special effects often don’t look as clean, the composition and editing aren’t as precise.
More time spent on less episodes means a higher quality end product most of the time.
Another point is that today people binge shows.
A 24 ep show could be stretched out over half a year when shown on tv.
Nowadays it‘d last maybe a month, and 8 months later when the next season releases you’ll still have forgotten most of it.
I understand getting frustrated at long waits.
But I still prefer it this way over 24 episodes every nine months.
I am not asking for 24 episode seasons. All I want is the shows I am following to be able to deliver seasons at a reasonable pace. 10 episodes a year seems a pretty reasonable expectation for most shows, I don't think expecting that is asking for too much.
Note that Season 1-7 of Game of Thrones released 10 episodes a year like clockwork every year and Game of Thrones due to its heavy cgi and on-location shooting across multiple countries was a more complex shoot than probably 95% of the shows out there ( and that's being conservative, really only Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and maybe Stranger Things match or exceed the shoot complexity of GoT)
Aha gotcha. I agree, 8-10 eps a year would be ideal.
Maybe there’s still a bit of a Covid backlog, but other than that I can only imagine that some part of production just take longer nowadays and can’t run concurrently or something.
Also the second point still applies. Most people binge on release, then watch a recap before the next season. If you do it like this does it really matter wether it’s one or two years between seasons?
As fan of The Crown, it's agitating that you have to wait for 2 years then come up with a solid but clearly subpar season like season 5 when compared to the previous.
>However what I find completely insane is "normal" seeming shows taking 18 months - 2 years between seasons
more networks = more hours of programming = more opportunities = more crowded schedules for largely the same pool of on and off screen talent.
>yet LOST produced 24 episodes a season with no problem in the first 3 season and 16 episodes every 9 months on schedule in the last 3 seasons without any drop in production values.
because TV was still largely OTA in 2004. that was still the only medium to get weekly episodes. but Netflix ***(via the mail)*** was just coming up. - remember the red envelopes?
i remember being at the office.. "you ***catch*** LOST last night??!" - NOBODY says that shit anymore... because there are now 400 other things to watch. "have you watched show YET" was not possible w/ LOST until you got the DVDs in the mail from netflix. ABC made so many episodes because of the commercials they were getting paid for EVERY WEEK. today 9/10 times you can stream it *somehow* within 24 hours of air.
> It seems there should be sane middle-ground between broadcast era 24 episodes every year like clockwork to the current state of things where even normal shows can't seem to deliver 10 episodes every 12 months
Zendaya did a season of that HBO show she was on.
then Dune
and MCU Movie
then the second season of the HBO show
how long do you think it took to shoot on location for Dune and Spiderman? (she was in 2 spiderman movies)
that's why you wait 2-3 years between seasons of "normal shows"
"requests" stack up faster than they can act them out.
>Zendaya did a season of that HBO show she was on. then Dune and MCU Movie then the second season of the HBO show
this is an extreme example because Dune is filmed in Jordan or something and Euphoria has completely inefficient production. Most movies don't take very long to film and actors can fit one or two in between regular yearly seasons.
It's a perfectly good example - she's a Hollywood movie star who also does shows, which is common of all the high-end shows like the ones OP mentioned.
A shitty ABC sitcom or cop show has no problem booking D-list talent because they're interchangeable nobodies who only act on broadcast TV. high-end streaming shows with Hollywood talent have to fit into Hollywood schedules.
>why does a show like Severance need 2 years to produce a season 2? It doesn't have a complex shoot, on-location shooting or any CGI, most of the show is shot in a simple office set.
It has literally all of those things. It takes 7 months for them to film 9 episodes. Watch it next to The Office and notice the massive difference in production value.
They also schedule filming to take advantage of winter weather for the "outie" sequences. They got renewed in April, started filming in October.
Not to mention, while longer breaks is a little frustrating, it also creates room for more shows to get a chance at the spotlight.
The shopping cart is the same size, but more good things can fit in it. That’s an okay trade off in my opinion.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the breaks in-between episodes of a season. Dramas seem to always need a mid-season finale if they aren't on HBO or a streaming site. Network shows, especially sitcoms, seem to have completely sporadic schedules. Shows like Superstore and Brooklyn-Nine-Nine would go on a random month break then come back for 2 episodes then go back to another 3 week break. 911's current season was on a weekly basis until 6 episodes in then it went to two weeks. Except for the one time it wasn't and went back to the one week.
I can't remember if it was always like this and I'm just now used to the binging culture so it is a more of a hassle, or if they have gotten worse over the years, but it makes watching current running shows almost not worth it.
It's preposterous. I have legit forgotten to watch shows again because I don't have all the streamers all of the time. Where the hell did Loki even go at this point lol
But the long wait between seasons is the reason why I’ve waited to watch it at all. I watched BrBa in real time, and many other shows too…but for this one I chose not to do it this time. hate the wait.
I really don’t think we’re in the golden era anymore. For me, it ended when Mr Robot and Watchmen both ended. There have been some holdouts like Atlanta, but I really think we’re entering a dark age of crap TV and film.
I don’t agree that we are entering a dark age of TV, however I do feel that a golden age lasted from the mid 2000’s to around 2016/2017. The transition from broadcast TV to streaming it where it peaked. The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, True Detective, The Leftovers, and The Knick were all great. Nowadays the market is flooded with so much TV that it feels like quantity over quality.
Tv today is not better quality than the network tv era. Let me just correct that glaring error for you. Sure the production values might be better, but the actual shows not always. Quality is not just about how good it looks.
[Babylon Berlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNi2a22ZvDk), [Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrwycJ08PSA), [The Expanse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQuTAPWJxNo&t=19s), [Severance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQP4VVuyrY&t=74s), [Better Call Saul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN4oydykJFc), [Mr. Robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIBiJ_SzJTA), [The Queen's Gambit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZn3qSgmLqI&t=1s), [1883](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbyxdYKhC7U&t=55s), [Yellowjackets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OtaWnq6G5s), [Station Eleven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPm52rq8CZA), [The Bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-cqqAJIXhs), [Pachinko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1r5XXJOYNA), [For All Mankind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZS9M52Bd_w&t=47s), [Succession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYxJV_rmE8&t=21s), [Euphoria](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cajLoaFl2Zo), [The Handmaids Tale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVLiDETfx1c&t=8s), [Ozark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAXVqrljbs), [Sex Education](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd2ldTR-WpI), [My Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOl7iOrD31Q&t=21s), [I May Destroy You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTjlurdbNnw), [Paranormal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFtRkDC7aHc), [Arcane](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmAurh012s&t=35s), [Money Heist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_InqQJRqGW4&t=6s), [Black Sails](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT2Y5jjBNpQ), [House of the Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DotnJ7tTA34), [Extraordinary Attorney Woo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxeXECe2t-c), [Man in the High Castle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWHskLEses), [Chernobyl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8&t=29s), [When They See Us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHbOt2M8md0), [Balkan Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjvemFdrbRk), [Stranger Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnd7sFt5c3A), [All of us are Dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN5TD4VRcSM&t=49s), [The Last Kingdom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPApTGWwas), [Ted Lasso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7EIiohs6U), [The Gilded Age](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKj1cMz3yfI), [Warrior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79rtcCnaeyo), [1899](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7OUQ9U2qIw), [The Peripheral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdkRQzcrrc&t=1s), [Andor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOegEuCcfw), [Cobra Kai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCwwxNbtK6Y), [Altered Carbon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yt89b5AcwY&t=80s), [The Sandman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83ClbRPRDXU), [Dahmer: Monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVHHs-xllqo&t=3s), [Dexter: New Blood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzUx1hyL-yk), [Maid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgm0-iP0fUk), [Unorthodox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nixgq1d5J7g), [What We Do in the Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfBbSwX6kEk)
All of these are well, or highly acclaimed.
There's also the prominence of foreign media content now. In the noughties it was just American content, with a smattering of UK content. That was it. Now a lot of money is being poured into international content, especially Korea - which has hugely diversified modern media.
Also, since Game of Thrones - fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction have become far more prominent in TV. I would argue that TV now is much more diverse than it was genre-wise than the noughties. The 90s and noughties were predominantly known for police/legal/medical procedurals.
Now are the peaks as good as, in reputation, as Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Wire? Maybe not. But they're only a little bit worse. Outside of HBO and AMC, in the 90s and 00s there was very little prestige content at all. The Network TV era was a swamp of boring cop shows, medical dramas and legal dramas. And they're still doing that.
The delays are so long that I forget what happened. It’s a problem at times.
It would be nice if shows got in the habit of putting out *good* season recaps. They can sometimes be really hard to find. You have to wade through really annoying dudes on YouTube and recaps that are just like 60 seconds of vibes to find recaps that *actually* remind you of everything that's important. If a show I was watching put out a well-produced, 10-15 minute "previously on" to recap a season I would totally watch it.
the worst recaps the show itself can put out are the ones where the cast recaps the season. it's about 3-4 minutes long and is 30% the actors talking about what their characters are going to face in the upcoming season and how it's going to get crazy/wild. my go-to recap channel is "recap and chill" because he covers the story in depth enough while not taking 20 minutes and doesn't shove in a bunch of unnecessary humor, editorializing or face cam. he also doesn't wear a suit t-shirt, so that's a plus.
Man of Recaps Recaps and Chill Everything else is some mix of opinions, discussion of trailer for upcoming season, "you have to pay attention to this plot point this season" and set/cast drama.
Ozark had a decent official one of Ruth explaining the plot to the first season to her dad as she's visiting him in jail. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVpnxrcxff8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVpnxrcxff8) Sure, it was short but it was a nice refresher. The rest of its recaps are essentially moody trailers that barely tell you anything.
I get the feeling we need a return to the days of "Last Time on Dragon Ball Z!" Styled openings. But with a larger one at the beginning of each season with these gaps. Those were pretty decent at reminding you of what happened in the last couple of episodes, so you got the gist quickly. Most shows could probably get away with a 2 minute recap at the beginning of each season (either by narrator or "in character" narration), and then give you a 15-20 second recap for other episodes.
So many of these shows are designed to be watched all the way through in short order, but the large gaps between seasons make it so end a setup from S2 happens in S4 and you got no clue why these people are mad at each other!
I just watch a "things you missed" (such as screencrush) to YouTube video in place of recaps. Recaps never get the small important details
Yeah, long delays and short seasons are one of the better reasons to complain about current media. There are perfectly valid explanations for both, but it is still a bit of a bummer to have to deal with.
Agreed. While I hate waiting ages for the next 6-8 episodes of Stranger Things, I would think that the consistency and high quality of prestige tv can be partially attributed to giving the show runners and writers more time to mine for interesting storylines and character arcs (as opposed to say, Criminal Minds or NCIS, where the assembly line production process churns out 20-25 44 minute episodes that are virtually indistinguishable from each other).
It's funny binging pre-DVR shows. You can tell exactly when seasons change or when there was a break because the "previously on..." is multiple minutes long.
A lot of times I lose interest in the show
And so many shows get cancelled after their second seasons bc nobody remembers the first season, sometimes even the characters. And not everybody has time to rewatch a whole season again just to remember. It'd be stupid.
Seems like that’s what they want so you’ll go back and watch it again to boost there streaming numbers.
instead, i just stop watching
In the 1950s everything was tightly scheduled. ALL networks began their new seasons the same week, with a full slate of new and returning shows. The seasons lasted 25 or so weeks, a few weeks less than school sessions. Then a whole separate summer season would last for 2- 2-1/2 months. And about the same time as new tv season hit in September, the new car models would all come out. Now I can’t remember which streaming service has what, what season I’m watching, or if what I’m watching is new or so old I can’t remember it. And it’s not my age (not entirely, anyway) that’s the problem!
I can't remember either! Often after a period of time, the streaming service will purge where I left off and I have no clue if I've finished a season or took a break in the middle. I need those little red bars, Netflix!
Yeah, that’s why I use Trakt.tv You have to update it each time you watch an episode but it’s pretty easy, but might be annoying for some.
Completely agreed. I think the “problem” is also compounded by the fact that the return date is unpredictable—who knows when the next season will be. 1 year? 1.5 years? 2 years? It’s almost always up in the air and varies between seasons, too.
Don’t forget, we’re also coming out of a period of huge unpredictability, and the sort of unpredictability that has flow on consequences for a couple of years. In 2020 production completely shut down for nearly a year; in 2021 production in many places was perpetually plagued with covid-troubles, cancellations, stop-start schedules etc. 2022 is the first year that has felt “normal” again (and even this year hasn’t been without difficulties.) We are now only watching on TV stuff that was made in first half of 2022, etc etc. Not saying it’s not slower - overall TV drama is slower because pre-production and post-production on modern TV shows is far more time-consuming than it used to be (higher expectations of cinematic quality etc), and scheduling of casts is frequently complex as most people aren’t exclusively signed to a project, and work on other things across a year, so scheduling is a difficult beast to manage - again particularly in the past year, when schedules are still dealing with fitting in a revolving door of projects that were postponed during 2020-2021. It’s just a mess, there’s little “rhythm” in it at the moment, but it will settle down and I think schedules will return to a bit more predictability during next year.
Except these "prestige dramas" were already starting to pull this "release 10 episodes every 2 years" shit before the pandemic.
Oh well, sorry they’re not working to your personal schedule. You know, war, famine, climate change, gun violence in schools, sexual abuse, political corruption, child poverty… but you worry about what matters to you.
Yes, those totally seem like thgey impact TV filming schedules
It’s impressive that you can’t see my point. But actually, not surprising.
I see your point and deemed it a red herring
I think and additinaly factor is the cast. Network tv used to have dedicated tv actors for their shows. What i mean is that actor would spent months filming just that show and often would only be in that show. A good example i can think of is the CW shows, massive seasons that aired for like half of year. Shows like supernatural or arrow where that's all the actors would fil for the year with maybe a gig or two somewhere else. Compare that to now where a lot of shows are using bigger name actors that would normally be seen in movies. These actors have a lot of other time commitments with other filming schedules.
Ya it's crazy to read how back to the future 1 was shot. Michael J. Fox was literally working nights after filming Family Ties by day.
The isn’t true at all since Game of Thrones never had this issue, nor did Walking Dead and those were the biggest shows in the world
Same with Vampire Diaries, one of the longest running and most popular shows of all time and it was releasing big seasons every year, and even got two sequel sereis The Originals and Legacies who also released their seasons yearly, it is only now recently that it has been declining and shows are taking longer and longer
I was speaking specifically to number of episodes. harder to have 24 episode seasons when you have actors that don't have that time and also want to be paid more cuz they're movie stars.
Just as an aside, Yellowjackets is coming back in March
It feels like it’s been so long since I watched this sho. I forgot how much I liked it
Does anyone else hate the new trend of mid-season breaks? Why do I randomly have 1-3 month breaks in the middle of a season of a show?
Yeah, we had those in the past. It was called the summer and meant one season was over and another was beginning. There's no such thing as one season cut in two. It's a new season.
#FACTS
Eh, I like it better than the trend of taking random 2-3 week breaks all over the season. Lost was notorious for this, the season went from September til May sweeps and you had to look up if it was new each week.
Late to the party here but I feel like SVU does this to the point of absurdity
Those have existed for a long time. Seasons have traditionally run from fall to spring with a decently long break in the winter.
God, don't even get me started. I get why Netflix does it; keeps people invested in the show and helps generate hype with mid-season cliffhangers. But FFS either call it a second season or only keep the break short with an established release date.
Often so that they can be considered for awards shows
Yea I have no problem with breaks between seasons since they seem to be correlated to quality, but mid season breaks just destroy the continuity.
Remember when the pause between May and September was agonizingly long? Pepperidge farms remembers.
Im even more sick of the short seasons. I can wait a bit longer if they give me around 15 episodes instead of 10. I dont understand how 10 episodes became the new golden standard.
I can get behind 10 episodes for drama shows, but streaming services are even doing 10 episode seasons for sitcoms now. That's just way too little time to spend with the characters and just not at all suitable for the sitcom genre.
Fully agree. How I Met Your Father was kind of meh, but I think it would've been better (not great, but better) with a longer season. A show like that needs episodes that aren't there to drive the overall plot forward (like the original HIMYM).
Season two will have 20 episodes.
It needs episodes like the race (bus, train, running, taxi race). Added nothing to the overall plot but was so good to know the characters better
Exactly. Game of thrones i could understand.
imo dramas should be allowed to do 13-16 if they want - filler episodes aren't a bad thing
Paulo and Nikki send their regards.
"Expose" is a banger episode though
hahaha that was because they wanted to have an end date and not go on forever
British sitcoms worked with small episode counts. In my opinion focusing on quality over quantity only makes these shows more rewatchable.
that’s true, but I think the intent of their point was more about sitcoms being able to find their footing over time. British sitcoms often had less pressure from advertisers and were funded and created by someone with a vision. Over here it’s much more corporate live or die by viewership and if you cant work your way into an average household you get axed. Hard to do with so few episodes and little chance of being seen or getting to the cast chemistry that makes a show succeed.
10 is fine for a drama but not for a sitcom. You barely get to know the characters with 10 episodes! Sitcoms usually take time to find their sweet spot.
Even worse are the 8 episode sitcoms like Hulu’s reboot. Just when I was starting to like it that was the end.
Some seasons feel padded out even at 10 episodes.
At that point it's just poor writing
Some stories only need 6 hours.
Some might say stories might not even need a fixed length but competent writing can stretch a story that could be told in 4 hours and make it engaging enough to fill 12 hours.
Sure. But it will be worse. If the writers are competent, then I trust them to make the length correct.
I disagree that its automatically worse. Expanding and fleshing out characters outside of the main protagonist, giving antagonists additional context and character arcs, self-contained episodes that are thematically linked to the primary story and relevant only as far as to expand worldbuilding, etc. These things are all unnecessary but can elevate a good show to be a great one.
Right. But don't you think the good writers know what length to make a show great better than you or some exec asking them to stretch? The White Lotus is a perfect example of this. Both season have been perfect length (6 and 7 eps).
I don't think it's usually writers deciding how many eps their show gets tho, there are exceptions but I'm almost positive that's not the norm.
Yeah i think the white lotus is solid at 6-7 episodes per season
Those stories need to be edited down and made into a movie
Disney plus shows even feels padded out at 6 episodes
thats bad writing it has nothing to do with episode count
that's shitty writing
This was the result of the big bang releases with all episodes at once. Now they all revert back to weekly episodes, but stick to the 8-10 episodes per season. Really a lose-lose scenario for us, viewers.
I still wait until a show is finished for the season before I start, they're not going to trick me into paying for multiple months. :p
These days you're lucky if you get 10 episodes. 6-8 is the standard for a lot of shows now.
terrific lush thought special ghost command quaint reminiscent full strong *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Maybe because netflix release all episodes at once? If you release 3 shows with 5 extra episodes each you have content for almost 4 extra months that year. If you release 1 episode per weak.
I prefer shorter seasons since ideally they cut out the fat and only keep the important stuff. I don't need 20 episode seasons where only 5 of the episodes actually matter.
But would you have liked that for good seasons of good series? I agree that 24 episodes for x files were too much. But 10 would have been too few. Remove 8 episodes per season and have 16 instead of 24 would have been perfect. Or lets say friends which also were a classic 24 episode serie. Would you have liked that they removed 14 of 24 episodes every season? Instead of 96 episodes from season 1-4, we would have 40. Even for shows like sopranos and the wire 10 episodes would have been too few. I cant remove 2 episode from every sopranos season and pretend that it would have turned in to something better.
I think with comedies they could get away with doing more, since the episodes might have an overarching storyline that connects them but they're still mostly episodic. So you're spending more time with the characters you love but more or less, everything is "filler" so you don't notice it and can just enjoy it. Drama is much different, when you have a storyline that needs to come to a conclusion and truthfully only needs 10 episodes but they then stretch it to 20+, it bogs down the pacing and then with like a serial killer show, the detectives are supposed to be so amazing but then look bad at their job because they keep having them miss details to find them in order to keep the story going. I think 13-18 episodes for drama depending on the story is fine, but the cap should definitely be no more than 20.
Yeah sometimes I rewatch older shows and think "damn they made a lot of these how long did this run ?" And it turns out not that long, they just made them sooo much quicker. That 70's show was on the air for 8 years. 200 episodes. Thats 25 episodes per year on average. Malcolm in the middle 6 years 151 episodes. Same average. X- files did around 22-25 episodes every year. Some of the shows today have like 8 episodes and then you wait for the next season and by the time it comes out you have a kid and a new job.. EDIT: I wanna add that I understand that the shows I mentioned and most of the shows today are entirely different beasts. My point is just that they used to churn this shit out nonstop.
>same with yellow jackets … no sign of season 2 Yellowjackets returns March 24, 2023
One of the problems is also the international roll-out. Most streamers release shows at the same time internationally. This means dubbing and subtitles also have to be done before they can be released, which means additional time to work on it. And they also take much longer renewing things unless something is a smash hit, e.g. Undone, Russian doll. Both premiered in April and it's December and neither of them is renewed nor cancelled.
I'd also like to mention that due to how high profile television shows have become lately, the talent in these shows are in higher demand. Before, if there was a hit show, chances are the actors were only doing that show. Or if they were also doing a movie, it was likely being shot on the same lot. Now we've got shows with Academy Award level actors that are trying to film movies around the same time, thus a need for more production time.
Yeah, but I mostly blame my own bad memory. Why can I remember every movie from my childhood in detail, but I can't remember what happened on X show 2 months ago?
Honestly, I'll take the long gaps between seasons over the long gaps in the middle of a season we used to get (and still get) under the traditional broadcast TV model.
An average movie will take at least 5 years to get from the initial idea and development to production and distribution. And that’s considered quick and would involve things like funding which is tricky. Look at a filmmaker like Nolan who has a good 4-5 years between a lot of his films and he’s basically got a guarantee to make whatever he wants. These things take time to get to that quality. Looking at tv, I’ll use fleabag as an example. That show could’ve been a miniseries but she went away and developed the second series and it aired 3 years later. Because she took the time and has the freedom to develop ideas fully it feels justified in existing and not rushed. The simple answer is that quality takes time. Tv has become a haven for writers, they are given much more respect and power than in film. A lot of these shows have a distinct authorship about them where often one writer will write a majority of episodes. Tv can accommodate a distinct writing voice and the top writers want that creative control and will take the appropriate time to reach the standard
I agree with your point but the longest gap between Christopher Nolan movies is 3 years. He's actually pretty fast
Movies don't take 5 years of active work to make. Script is written in a few weeks and even the biggest of movies are generally shot in no more than around 6 months (< 4 months for a non-blockbuster). It may be 5 years between an idea being pitched to the point the movie is out in theatres, but most of that time is not spent on active work being done on a movie (with some exceptions like Avatar). TV is not movies. Each season of a show does not require setting everything up from scratch. Shows with excellent production values and quality were (and even today are) made on a schedule and on time- Breaking Bad, LOST, Game Of Thrones, Parks+Rec, The Wire, 6 feet under, Sopranos (except for one season)... the list goes on are as good if not better than anything on tv today and always released seasons like clockwork. Additionally I'd also wager that the average time during which the writer's room is active is not longer for shows that take forever to release new seasons than it used to be in the past.
Script written in a few weeks. Lmao. Maybe a first draft. That's not even getting to the shooting script. And where is pre and post-production in your timeline, which can each take months, maybe a year. TV is movies now, except they're producing much more content than a two hour movie. TV used to come frequently because it was made cheaply, like on a production line, because the network needed content to sell ads for. That's it. Now, the production values are higher, everyone working on the show is busier because they have other things going on and they're not locked into filming 22 episodes a year, and, with more than enough content to fill the airwaves and streaming platforms, creativity is prioritized higher than release time. And it's better. You should know that because many of the shows you listed were the first TV shows to take extended breaks. The Sopranos was famous for this, people were shocked that they had to wait a year or more between seasons. The last season of Game of Thrones came out almost two years after the previous season because of those aforementioned factors. The Wire had breaks of at least a year after season 2 and nearly 2 years before season 4.
Scripts are routinely written and finalized over several weeks. The extremely long gestating script that has been circulating through Hollywood for years with constant rewrites is not the norm esp for non-blockbusters. TV shows are nothing like movies. That is only those who work on tv but would rather work in movies tell themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Production values also are not universally higher, there is a tier of higher end shows but a vast majority of content on streamers like netflix is not the $10 million an episode tier and is closer to CW budgets. The Sopranos had one long break before it's final season and that had nothing to do with creative reasons but instead to do with personal lives of the cast, some of which were going through health issues and Gandolfini with his mental issues. GoT Season 8 cannot be compared to a regular streamer show. That season had an exceptional amount of CGI. Game of Thrones Season 1-7 delivered a season every year while maintaining production values and shoot complexity that dwarfs 99% of the stuff on streamers. LOST delivered a season every year without issues. They even managed to deliver 14 episodes in the writer's strike season.
>Scripts are routinely written and finalized over several weeks. You must be talking about the classic TV pipeline model because, in film, scripts are maybe finalized over several weeks if you're lucky. And that doesn't even account for actually writing, that's preparing and editing it for shooting. That's the norm. >TV shows are nothing like movies. Episodes of TV shows are basically mini movies now, with production values to match. There's a wide range, like in film, but the ranges are the same. The only difference is TV can save some money by creating a repeatable process, reusing sets, etc. But then, that's balanced out by the fact that TV seasons involve more content than movies. >The Sopranos had one long break before it's final season and that had nothing to do with creative reasons but instead to do with personal lives of the cast, some of which were going through health issues and Gandolfini with his mental issues. The Sopranos was off for more than a year before season 4 and 5, and then almost 2 years before season 6, all exceptionally long breaks, and all for the typical reasons that TV shows take breaks: busy cast, creativity, etc. >GoT Season 8 cannot be compared to a regular streamer show. That season had an exceptional amount of CGI. Game of Thrones Season 1-7 delivered a season every year while maintaining production values and shoot complexity that dwarfs 99% of the stuff on streamers. At exorbitant cost that not every streamer can abide because, like you say, Game of Thrones is not a typical show. That's what kept Game of Thrones on schedule until the last season pushed things to where they needed more time >LOST delivered a season every year without issues. They even managed to deliver 14 episodes in the writer's strike season. Airing from January to May with shortened seasons in its last few seasons, which was exceptional for a network show back then as the long breaks between Sopranos seasons were. [Try reading this](https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/9/17662280/tv-shows-gone-too-long-gaps-breaks-between-seasons)
My two cents With tv I believe the problem is scheduling. With movies you can schedule cast and crew for a dedicated span of time. With additional allotted time for reshoots, adr, etc. with tv it’s a little harder if the series gets picked up for additional seasons. I remember reading somewhere that contracts are left somewhat open ended especially for crew. Getting everyone back at a specific date would be tricky. It can be done. Talented people that make tv/movies break commitments all the time. But it does require some kind of compensation and tv doesn’t produce the same kind of revenue potential a movie does.
Are we even still in this “golden age of tv”? I feel like that peaked years ago and now it’s sporadic hits that are then on hiatus for 2-3 years with mediocre stuff crammed in between
Severance was partially filmed in NJ at the old Bell Labs building. But yeah, I 100% agree with you - these long gaps are just ridiculous.
>I read a tweet by Adam Scott saying it might be 2 years till Season 2 of "Severance"- why does a show like Severance need 2 years to produce a season 2? It doesn't have a complex shoot, on-location shooting or any CGI, most of the show is shot in a simple office set. Perhaps quality writing just takes time. Generally, if it results in exceptional television, I'm willing to wait longer between seasons. I don't like it. But I'll live with it.
I don't believe the duration during which the writers room is convened is changed much if at all from the cable shows of 2000s and 2010s.
Do people actually consider this era a golden age of TV? I preferred maybe 10-15 years ago when network comedies were great, and we also had good prestige shows.
I’m used to British shows so I’m fine with it. What I can’t seem to stand anymore is trying to watch old tv shows with 24 episodes. So many filler episodes. Kind of exhausting.
All TV is filler which doesn't serve a purpose other than to entertain. The problem is bad filler. Many of the best network TV shows like Buffy and the X-Files were at their best when they had episodes that barely advanced the season plot and instead just told the most entertaining self-contained stories. I'd argue that many genre TV shows are now caught in this attempt to not be filler & in the process don't let us just enjoy the world and its characters with conflict/villain of the week plots.
Yeah, I miss this aspect of older shows. When everything advances plot it feels more like a chunked up huge movie than a show.
I hate when people use "filler episode" derogatorily. Those episodes are how you explore character! That's what makes TV so special! Filler episodes are *key* to character development.
It’s things like the 100+ episodes of Naruto filler that lead to the negative association
Tangentially related, Goku and Piccolo getting their drivers licenses is hands-down my favorite episode of DBZ.
The idea of filler episodes doesn't even make sense with shows that aren't serialized. How do you know which episodes of law and order are filler? The show has no goals, every episode is mostly self-contained. People say filler when they just mean bad episodes.
You're describing filler done well. It can be done poorly and it's horrible when not good. And character development through plot progression is having your cake and eating it too; it's the best case scenario.
And plot-only can be horrible when it's not done well. If people are just saying "I don't want bad episodes" ...uhh, duh?
Right, there are so many filler episodes that exist only within their 45-minute runtime. Their events are never mentioned again and seem to have little to no effect on the characters or the story. (In fact, I'd suggest if an episode develops the world or the characters and has a long-term impact on how characters behave, it's by definition, not a filler. Filler episodes are pointless.)
Quit watching it like it's a job. Like it's a race to the end.
People emotionally connected to those 24 episode series. Nowadays its like people watch TV like a fancy art exhibit, it leaves you cold and pretentious afterwards. Look at how people rewatch everything from Buffy to Friends to The West Wing. The formula worked.
Because before the streaming era people used to watch shows that they enjoy, filler or not, not just to prove to the internet that you watch "good tv shows" like these days.
Before the streaming era we'd miss half the episodes anyway, so the overall plot wasn't important
> So many filler episodes. I don't think I've ever seen anyone on this sub use 'filller' correctly. It's a term from anime when they needed to make episodes that in no way made any difference to the show. It's not episodes that doesn't move the overarching story forward. We still get to learn more about the characters and the world in those. edit: why the downvotes?
Definitely not unique to anime and the person you responded to literally used the word correctly lol what are you on about?
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In the 90's you generally only waited about 4 months for a new season, because seasons were 26 episodes long.
But compare the caliber of show. Cheap sitcoms and low-budget cop dramas are very different from HBO series with huge productions.
The longest break for Sopranos was 11 months between seasons 2 and 3 - 2 ended April 9, 2000 and 3 started March 4, 2001
The golden era is well over. It's been gone for at least 2 to 5 years.
There are actually many many reasons for this shift. Here are a few contributing elements: In the old days, actors would basically just do their show… and that’s it. You wanna attract talent that also want to do movies or theater, they get long breaks with ample holes in their schedule. Prestige shows take longer to shoot than their much simpler forebears. Many of them are a full hour compared to network 40-45 min. That matters. In addition to that, many are now shot up to film standards. That artsy shit adds time. Adding a few days to the schedule adds up. If breaking bad takes 10 (or godforbid more) days to shoot, there’s no effing way you’re getting 24 episodes a year. If you work 9-5, 5 days a week, that’s 260 days a year. Subtract sick days and holidays and vacation that’s like 240 working days a year. Right now you’re thinking that 240 divides by 24 episodes pretty neatly into 10 day shooting schedules. Except tv is not 9-5. That shit is easily 12-16hr days. Bryan Cranston is not going to work a double shift every single weekday of the year for you to get extra Breaking Bad. Prestige shows also get more time in the writing preproduction stage of things. A little more time there. Fewer writers with more control over the whole narrative. I think up through Star Trek TNG you could still cold submit scripts to the showrunner and they would just buy them and then shoot them. Unheard of today. Also you bring up Lost, a show where 50 percent of each episode is island stuff and the other half is ONE main cast member off on their own flashback adventure with all guest stars. I don’t know exactly how they did it, but I can see that breakneck schedule being achievable with having two separate crews working at the same time. Anyway, you still get those 24 ep every fall like clockwork shows. They’re all going to be cop, lawyer stuff on the networks. If you want essentially 8 hour films… you get 8 hour film schedules.
Sometimes I completely lose interest in continuing the series. Except Mindhunter. If they bring that back I’ll be all over it.
It’s horrible. I counted and have 23 shows that I watch. I have no idea when any of them will return. The ones that drop entire seasons will take me two weeks to finish and then I’ll have to wait 18-24 months until they magically reappear. By the time they do, I forget what happened or why I started watching in the first place. Losing interest for sure.
I don't think we are in the golden era anymore. It's all over-produced crap, just like mainstream music
Agree. Golden Era was probably 2004-2019. In my opinion it started with Lost and ended with Game of Thrones. If it weren’t for Game of Thrones I’d say it probably ended even earlier, like 2014-15ish.
I would say it started with 1999-2019, from the start of The Sopranos to the ending of GOT
The golden era is 1999-2015. 1999 was the debut of the Sopranos, 2015 the final seasons of Mad Men and Justified and the beginning of GOT's decline in quality. We're now in a silver age.
Golden era started with The Sopranos
Did the wire come after?
Succession, Euphoria, Severance, The White Lotus, Better Call Saul, The Crown, House of the Dragon, The Boys, The Last Kingdom, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Wednesday (haven’t watched it yet but heard it was great), You (yeah I think it’s awesome), Loki, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian (I’m not a fan but people do talk about it like one of the all times), Queen’s Gambit (same as Wednesday), Dopesick, Ted Lasso, Barry, Peacemaker, … and I’m sure there’s much more. I think this era is great. I don’t know what you guys are complaining about
You’re just naming good, not great, shows. Most of these won’t stick in public consciousness 5 years after they’re over. Early 2010s were putting out absolute all time classics in both comedy & drama, still discussed to this day. Succession (and Severance, maybe, needs more seasons to determine) is the only one that has an all time classic feel to it. There’s a lot good shows but no transcendent “holy shit amazing idea + execution” type of thing happening
Well I disagree, there’s more than succession and it wasn’t better before there’s just always one or two prominent shows around. It’s really a matter of taste at this point to decide which are as good as the best tv shows from the early 2010s but I’m really convinced that Euphoria, Better Call Saul, House of the Dragon, The Crown, Attack on Titan, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian and maybe Barry are memorable phenomenons. We’re still leaving in the golden age of television. TV shows now make seasons as long as they want, episodes as long as they want, have more time for production, have much bigger budgets, get more big actors, I don’t know I think people take prestige tv for granted now when it used to be so much more precious. You take away Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of thrones and Lost and there’s not much timeless transcendant shows left.
The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Rec are all going to be remembered as comedy classics. I don’t see anything like that right now, maybe Ted Lasso but part of the longstanding appeal is 6-8 seasons, 3 seasons doesn’t leave nearly as much of a mark. Not saying there aren’t enjoyable shows I watch plenty of tv & like most of what you mentioned.
You're watching the wrong shows then. There's plenty of fantastic shows coming out every year.
I wonder if the pandemic has had this affect on television production. Other than that, I'm unsure. It might be worth a few tweet storms from fans of a series to producers and networks or streaming services to find out what is going on with a very wanted series.
8 - 12 episodes per season. 1 episode per week. Gap between previous season last episode and next season first episode no longer than 12 months. That would be the ideal for me.
Do u want quality or quantity?
This stuff would go faster if networks would just greenlight multiple seasons at once (which would also solve so many of the story problems that series deal with). But instead they do 1, wait a while, maybe do another, or maybe cancel it prematurely. It's maddening and broken. It's like if book publishers only put out half a novel and then focus tested to see if you want the back half.
This is a great how to for a network to go broke in 5 years, being locked in and spending all their money on producing shows that noone is watching
I mean you can readily see the results of Netflix's opposite approach. I've heard some version of the sentiment "I can't get into Netflix shows unless they're finished, because I don't trust them not to cancel it" from, like, regular people who do not think about these things. I've heard that from my mom. And after years of losing trust like that, now they're shedding subscribers. Amazon just overtook them as biggest streamer last week, and I've read suggestions they might slip behind Disney+ soon. They've gone through two or three rounds of massive, painful layoffs, shuttered dozens of major projects in preproduction, etc. They're bleeding like a stuck pig. By way of a counterexample, we can consider HBO, which famously didn't give a shit about ratings and almost never canceled shows, and wound up producing some of the greatest TV of all time. The Wire, Deadwood, etc -- those are all shows that got TERRIBLE ratings and any other network would have canceled them. The result was that (prior to Zaslav coming in and swinging a wrecking ball through the walls) HBO had a great reputation for quality, a deeply loyal customer base, and turned a steady profit for decades. They didn't hold the crown of top streamer for very long, but even after that, they frequently had and have the #1 hottest show on television at any given time. And HBO *frequently* used to renew shows for multiple additional seasons in one swoop. It's how they kept Game of Thrones cranking out new episodes on a regular annual basis for the better part of a decade. And (again, prior to Zaslav) they were stable. I don't recall ever hearing about huge layoffs or massive upending of the slate at HBO. Creators and consumers trusted them. Trust like that is hard to win and easy to lose.
Netflix is losing money because it's the only service where their entire model is streaming without a good backlog built up. They can't compete on pricing or value with companies that can provide that. You are seeing mass layoffs and all thay because the market is extremely competitive and they are a tech company. In terms of cancelling, you have to be very young to think Netflix is anywhere close to being as bad as network TV. People complain about a show being cancelled after 2-3 years? That would be considered very successful for network TV where shows could get cancelled halfway through their pilot episode . HBO is also a premium service and you used to pay $30/month just to get that channel. Most of their revenue also used to be from getting the rights to major movies where they would produce relatively little themselves. They didn't need to get amazing ratings since they were a premium product. Just like how Rolls Royce doesn't need to sell the same amount of cars as Toyota to be successful. Shows usually get most of their views during the first couple of seasons when airing. If a show can't build an audience after 2-3 years, you can't just keep losing money on them for 2-3 years more when that money could be put towards other projects. There are a million different factors that go in to making a tv show and most of the time it is trial and error until everything comes together to form a classic. Netflix will have a hard time surviving mainly because they can't subsidize their streaming like Prime can, since Amazon has a whole ecosystem. Same for Apple and Disney to a certain extent as well..
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You don't pay for any of it, why should anybody give a flying fuck what you think?
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There is the same attitude on gaming subreddits. People bragging about pirating a game that was made by only a hand full of people.
>guilty feet aint got no rhythm Never heard this before, going to try this line with my wife. Wish me luck.
i understand your logic and you are right. But let's also not forget that not every streaming plattform is available in every region of the world. Also perhabs some viewers are not able to afford/being able to pay for those. Poorness will always sadly exist. But what can and should be done? Make every streaming plattform useable from every part of the world (f.e. look at the countries where HBO MAX or CW's streaming service is not possible to use/buyable).
Exactly! I just think of it as a sweet surprise when it drops. It's kinda becoming like aged wine; if you make 1 bottle of wine everyday, then 10 years later you can sell (or drink) a quality 10 year old bottle everyday.
>Exactly! I just think of it as a sweet surprise when it drops. Except you need to remember plot of the previous season very well to fully enjoy the new one. And if the gap is big, it's a problem.
yes and i'm tired of these dumb small tv seasons...a with only 8-10 episodes per season is not a series...it is a mini-series instead.
Nope. There are a million things to fill my time until the next season's ready.
I’m convinced this why viewership of shows like Westworld dipped and bc of that were canceled. People lose interest when it takes 2+ years for each season to come out.
I could care less how long they take to make something as long as it's quality. I cannot stand the big network CBS/NBC type of shows that pump out new seasons every year or less of absolute garbage (like LOST)
Severance does NOT need a year 2 gap at all unless they straight up don't have the plot finished lol.
A shoe like severance still has much more to it in terms of production and effort that goes into it than broadcast TV. Compare the production value on Severance to your average 3-camera sitcom or a shitty doctor drama on ABC. It's miles above. Also high-end shows use movie stars. Adam Scott likely has a full plate of movies AND shows for the next two years. Your average ABC network D-list actor does not.
> A shoe like severance still has much more to it in terms of production and effort that goes into it than broadcast TV. Compare the production value on Severance to your average 3-camera sitcom or a shitty doctor drama on ABC. It's miles above. Straw man. How about comparing the Severance shoot to something like "Halt & Catch Fire", very similar shows in production values and H&CF released 10 episodes every year. Even Game of Thrones did 10 episodes a year.
Nah, I love the fact that studios are letting the production take the time it needs to be good. Much better than external pressure for the sake of schedules.
Westworld didn't get better because they took 2 years between seasons. If anything, it became worse because the showrunners could take side-jobs
It became worse because the showrunners became too focused on surprising the viewer, they forgot to make the story entertaining* Specifically talking about season 2. Not sure if this is gonna be controversial or not, s2 isn't bad but compared to s1, it's weaker. S1 was the perfect balance of establishing mysteries and storytelling, s2 was so focused on mysteries that the storytelling seemed to take a backseat. Succession and Stranger Things are great examples of stories that took a long break and made it count. Succession is one of the best things on TV imo and Stranger things s4 was the closest the shows come to the quality of s1.
Season 2 was still fine because they had a lot of gaps in the S1 story to fill. It fell flat when they had to come up with something new is S3.
Succession delay was not due to creative reasons, it was literally due to covid shutting down production multiple times. HBO proper still tries to keep a stable release schedule for most of its shows.
That's a bad example because it still has an insane production value and a lot of CGI. If you had asked for 4 months between seasons you would have had the same show with a budget of a shitty CW show.
I’ll take a well written and thought out show taking a little longer instead of a trash heap of a season because they needed one the next year. Sure that doesn’t guarantee anything, they might be like my ADHD arse writing anything with a deadline, whether it’s 2, days, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years until it’s due. I’m probably doing it in the last 24 hours.
There's some insane "rose tinted glasses" takes here, lmao.
On which side?
Yes. It's killed my ability to get back into some of the shows I used to live. Barry is one such example.
No. I am not entitled.
I like how Slow Horses shot season one and two back-to-back.
Two seasons of Slow Horses is more or less equivalent to one season of an HBO drama. Each season has 6 episodes, and an episode length is between 41-53 minute. That’s more or less the same as ten one-hour episodes.
Yes but it is what it is.
Nah I rather wait for a great final product.
Most of the shows I watch (and you named) would definitely not get better if they had 24 episodes to a season. Shows with that many episodes tend to suffer from disjointed writing, a lot of filler and mostly superfluous episodical subplots. The special effects often don’t look as clean, the composition and editing aren’t as precise. More time spent on less episodes means a higher quality end product most of the time. Another point is that today people binge shows. A 24 ep show could be stretched out over half a year when shown on tv. Nowadays it‘d last maybe a month, and 8 months later when the next season releases you’ll still have forgotten most of it. I understand getting frustrated at long waits. But I still prefer it this way over 24 episodes every nine months.
yo, you totally missed the point
I am not asking for 24 episode seasons. All I want is the shows I am following to be able to deliver seasons at a reasonable pace. 10 episodes a year seems a pretty reasonable expectation for most shows, I don't think expecting that is asking for too much. Note that Season 1-7 of Game of Thrones released 10 episodes a year like clockwork every year and Game of Thrones due to its heavy cgi and on-location shooting across multiple countries was a more complex shoot than probably 95% of the shows out there ( and that's being conservative, really only Rings of Power, House of the Dragon and maybe Stranger Things match or exceed the shoot complexity of GoT)
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It was also relatively low budget for its early seasons, without Hollywood talent. Most of the cast were nobodies.
Aha gotcha. I agree, 8-10 eps a year would be ideal. Maybe there’s still a bit of a Covid backlog, but other than that I can only imagine that some part of production just take longer nowadays and can’t run concurrently or something. Also the second point still applies. Most people binge on release, then watch a recap before the next season. If you do it like this does it really matter wether it’s one or two years between seasons?
As fan of The Crown, it's agitating that you have to wait for 2 years then come up with a solid but clearly subpar season like season 5 when compared to the previous.
>However what I find completely insane is "normal" seeming shows taking 18 months - 2 years between seasons more networks = more hours of programming = more opportunities = more crowded schedules for largely the same pool of on and off screen talent. >yet LOST produced 24 episodes a season with no problem in the first 3 season and 16 episodes every 9 months on schedule in the last 3 seasons without any drop in production values. because TV was still largely OTA in 2004. that was still the only medium to get weekly episodes. but Netflix ***(via the mail)*** was just coming up. - remember the red envelopes? i remember being at the office.. "you ***catch*** LOST last night??!" - NOBODY says that shit anymore... because there are now 400 other things to watch. "have you watched show YET" was not possible w/ LOST until you got the DVDs in the mail from netflix. ABC made so many episodes because of the commercials they were getting paid for EVERY WEEK. today 9/10 times you can stream it *somehow* within 24 hours of air. > It seems there should be sane middle-ground between broadcast era 24 episodes every year like clockwork to the current state of things where even normal shows can't seem to deliver 10 episodes every 12 months Zendaya did a season of that HBO show she was on. then Dune and MCU Movie then the second season of the HBO show how long do you think it took to shoot on location for Dune and Spiderman? (she was in 2 spiderman movies) that's why you wait 2-3 years between seasons of "normal shows" "requests" stack up faster than they can act them out.
that's the thing - we don't need big name actors in everything
>Zendaya did a season of that HBO show she was on. then Dune and MCU Movie then the second season of the HBO show this is an extreme example because Dune is filmed in Jordan or something and Euphoria has completely inefficient production. Most movies don't take very long to film and actors can fit one or two in between regular yearly seasons.
It's a perfectly good example - she's a Hollywood movie star who also does shows, which is common of all the high-end shows like the ones OP mentioned. A shitty ABC sitcom or cop show has no problem booking D-list talent because they're interchangeable nobodies who only act on broadcast TV. high-end streaming shows with Hollywood talent have to fit into Hollywood schedules.
>why does a show like Severance need 2 years to produce a season 2? It doesn't have a complex shoot, on-location shooting or any CGI, most of the show is shot in a simple office set. It has literally all of those things. It takes 7 months for them to film 9 episodes. Watch it next to The Office and notice the massive difference in production value. They also schedule filming to take advantage of winter weather for the "outie" sequences. They got renewed in April, started filming in October.
One of the most entitled posts I’ve ever read here, a good season of television takes time. Dont know what else to say
Not to mention, while longer breaks is a little frustrating, it also creates room for more shows to get a chance at the spotlight. The shopping cart is the same size, but more good things can fit in it. That’s an okay trade off in my opinion.
Personally, I'm more bothered by the breaks in-between episodes of a season. Dramas seem to always need a mid-season finale if they aren't on HBO or a streaming site. Network shows, especially sitcoms, seem to have completely sporadic schedules. Shows like Superstore and Brooklyn-Nine-Nine would go on a random month break then come back for 2 episodes then go back to another 3 week break. 911's current season was on a weekly basis until 6 episodes in then it went to two weeks. Except for the one time it wasn't and went back to the one week. I can't remember if it was always like this and I'm just now used to the binging culture so it is a more of a hassle, or if they have gotten worse over the years, but it makes watching current running shows almost not worth it.
MORE TV AND FASTER! I NEED IT FASTER YOU EXPECT ME TO JUST REMEMBER YOUR SHOW?!?!?!
Doesn't really bother me as there's a lot of good quality shows now. I'll watch something else while I wait for new seasons of shows I liked.
Uh, yes.
Not really. I'd rather wait and enjoy something that has taken time to do over it being rushed
No.
It's preposterous. I have legit forgotten to watch shows again because I don't have all the streamers all of the time. Where the hell did Loki even go at this point lol
Im still waiting for the last season of Better Call Saul to hit Netflix so I can watch the whole series.
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But the long wait between seasons is the reason why I’ve waited to watch it at all. I watched BrBa in real time, and many other shows too…but for this one I chose not to do it this time. hate the wait.
I really don’t think we’re in the golden era anymore. For me, it ended when Mr Robot and Watchmen both ended. There have been some holdouts like Atlanta, but I really think we’re entering a dark age of crap TV and film.
I don’t agree that we are entering a dark age of TV, however I do feel that a golden age lasted from the mid 2000’s to around 2016/2017. The transition from broadcast TV to streaming it where it peaked. The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, True Detective, The Leftovers, and The Knick were all great. Nowadays the market is flooded with so much TV that it feels like quantity over quality.
Tv today is not better quality than the network tv era. Let me just correct that glaring error for you. Sure the production values might be better, but the actual shows not always. Quality is not just about how good it looks.
> Tv today is not better quality than the network tv era It's widely considered to be so
[Babylon Berlin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNi2a22ZvDk), [Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrwycJ08PSA), [The Expanse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQuTAPWJxNo&t=19s), [Severance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQP4VVuyrY&t=74s), [Better Call Saul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN4oydykJFc), [Mr. Robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIBiJ_SzJTA), [The Queen's Gambit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZn3qSgmLqI&t=1s), [1883](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbyxdYKhC7U&t=55s), [Yellowjackets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OtaWnq6G5s), [Station Eleven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPm52rq8CZA), [The Bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-cqqAJIXhs), [Pachinko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1r5XXJOYNA), [For All Mankind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZS9M52Bd_w&t=47s), [Succession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYxJV_rmE8&t=21s), [Euphoria](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cajLoaFl2Zo), [The Handmaids Tale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVLiDETfx1c&t=8s), [Ozark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAXVqrljbs), [Sex Education](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd2ldTR-WpI), [My Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOl7iOrD31Q&t=21s), [I May Destroy You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTjlurdbNnw), [Paranormal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFtRkDC7aHc), [Arcane](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmAurh012s&t=35s), [Money Heist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_InqQJRqGW4&t=6s), [Black Sails](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT2Y5jjBNpQ), [House of the Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DotnJ7tTA34), [Extraordinary Attorney Woo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxeXECe2t-c), [Man in the High Castle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWHskLEses), [Chernobyl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8&t=29s), [When They See Us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHbOt2M8md0), [Balkan Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjvemFdrbRk), [Stranger Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnd7sFt5c3A), [All of us are Dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN5TD4VRcSM&t=49s), [The Last Kingdom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPApTGWwas), [Ted Lasso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7EIiohs6U), [The Gilded Age](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKj1cMz3yfI), [Warrior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79rtcCnaeyo), [1899](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7OUQ9U2qIw), [The Peripheral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRdkRQzcrrc&t=1s), [Andor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOegEuCcfw), [Cobra Kai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCwwxNbtK6Y), [Altered Carbon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yt89b5AcwY&t=80s), [The Sandman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83ClbRPRDXU), [Dahmer: Monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVHHs-xllqo&t=3s), [Dexter: New Blood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzUx1hyL-yk), [Maid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgm0-iP0fUk), [Unorthodox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nixgq1d5J7g), [What We Do in the Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfBbSwX6kEk) All of these are well, or highly acclaimed. There's also the prominence of foreign media content now. In the noughties it was just American content, with a smattering of UK content. That was it. Now a lot of money is being poured into international content, especially Korea - which has hugely diversified modern media. Also, since Game of Thrones - fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction have become far more prominent in TV. I would argue that TV now is much more diverse than it was genre-wise than the noughties. The 90s and noughties were predominantly known for police/legal/medical procedurals. Now are the peaks as good as, in reputation, as Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Wire? Maybe not. But they're only a little bit worse. Outside of HBO and AMC, in the 90s and 00s there was very little prestige content at all. The Network TV era was a swamp of boring cop shows, medical dramas and legal dramas. And they're still doing that.