Thanks to how prominent premium streaming services have become, we live in an era where there are more television shows than ever. There are just so many choices to sift through, it can be almost maddening to find something to watch. And all of these companies want to create that next big hit, so they throw ridiculously high budgets at shows and see what sticks.
It’s not, altogether, a bad thing for television, because it’s led to some truly groundbreaking hits. No longer is it a medium where A-list actors wouldn’t be caught dead starring in a show that airs weekly, which is why there are so many great ensemble shows where the cast is the reason to watch nowadays. The rise of prestige television also helps with this, and again, that’s a very good thing. However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend over the last few years where too many newer shows are so desperate to capture that prestigious, serialized feel that they forget to actually be television shows.
Too many shows feel like stretched-out movies now
Not every show needs to be a movie in disguise
Recently, I binged the Netflix mystery series Untamed, and I had a revelation: This show does not feel like television. Every episode felt like a small, one-hour piece of a long, six-hour movie. And I was completely underwhelmed by that realization. If I want to watch a murder mystery movie, I will just throw on Knives Out. I don’t need a six-part glorified movie for that, especially when it embraces the structure of film, but does so at a snail’s pace. For me, this often results in a show where the middle part of the season just feels sluggish for the sake of padding out the run time.
Don’t get me wrong, this type of storytelling can work, and it has worked. Mike Flanagan’s Netflix output has a similar cinematic feel to structure, but Flanagan knows how to stretch that type of story in interesting ways. There’s enough meat on the bones to justify it. However, many other shows nowadays believe that they must be cinematic in every sense to qualify as prestigious. They miss the point of what prestige television actually means because they forget about the latter part of that term, which is a big reason why I think older series can often be better than new releases.
The steady decline of the episode
The structure of television has changed
Due to the rise of film’s influence on prestige television and its structure, the term “episode” has become somewhat meaningless. It now exists as a stopgap — nothing more than a chapter indicator in a book. But for me, that betrays the spirit of television. Episodes have their own structure, and even in serialized stories, they contain stories or side plots that are wrapped up by the time the credits roll.
Look at Breaking Bad and its prequel series Better Call Saul, two of the best prestige dramas of all time. Creator Vince Gilligan understood that he was working on a television series, not a movie. Conflicts would pop up and be solved within an episode, and that would often feed into moving along the main story. It’s the perfect blend of television structure with elevated production values and acting. Seeing as Gilligan has a long and illustrious background in television, it makes sense.
I could even point to The Sopranos, which is often credited with bringing film-like quality to television, as an example here. Yes, plot lines rolled over between episodes and even seasons, but episodic conflict still played a major part in the structure. I think too many modern streaming shows have learned the wrong lesson from what came before. And they’re lessons that were never intended to be on the curriculum.
Binge culture is not the enemy of good television
We can still enjoy a good binge without destroying television
Who doesn’t enjoy a good binge-watch? I know I have engaged in many of them over the years, and I will continue to do so. My belief is that this trend toward television as extended movies is intended to appeal to binge culture, but it severely misunderstands what makes binge-watching so much fun. I have friends who will scoff at the idea of watching a movie longer than two hours, but will happily binge a series of 40-minute episodes, and there’s a good reason for that.
Binge-watching became popular because of the mass release of episodes, not because television became more like film. Look at Stranger Things, arguably one of the most popular examples of why binging is so fun. Sure, it has the feel and production quality of a movie, but there’s something distinctly television about the way it’s split up. Yes, it’s perhaps a little more cinematic in its plot structure than something like Breaking Bad, but it never forgets its roots.
Studios and streamers need to remember what brought this influx of viewers to them in the first place, and at least for me, it wasn’t to watch a ten-hour movie split into parts. If anything, the lack of good pacing and episodic structure is more likely to ensure I won’t binge on that show than anything else.
I understand why television has gone in this direction
All of this isn’t to say that I don’t understand the appeal of shows that are basically just long movies. Back in the day, a miniseries would often fill this role, and there are some great ones. And I even understand why creatives and viewers think this is the way to go. Lots of these cinematic series have a clear beginning, middle, and end contained within one or two seasons. If it doesn’t do well in whatever arbitrary ratings metric a streamer uses, well, at least there was a conclusion to the story.
My issue is that I do not want to see the death of a medium I value, nor do I want to see its structure abandoned. I get that everything has to evolve and change, and that’s an overall net positive for any creative endeavor. But the potential for turning prestige television into long-form movies almost exclusively will rob this small-screen medium of its diversity, creativity, and ability to tell stories independently of cinema.
But hey, there’s still some great television out there to watch. All you need is to know where to look. Maybe you’re in search of some sitcoms that you can watch forever without getting bored, in which case, we have the best recommendations for you.
