I saw an article in The Spectator by a contributor called Sam Leith, and this excerpt very well echoes my own general issues with TV dramas in the contemporary age:
“Hooray, I thought. There’s a new season of The Tourist. I remember liking that, I thought. It was that thing with the bloke in Australia, wasn’t it? And I was all set to settle down for a good binge, when I realised that I had almost literally no idea what had happened in the first season. One thing I knew is, it was confusing. There was a bloke in, yes, Australia, who had had a bump on the head and didn’t know who he was, except he was Jamie Dornan. I remember there was a bit with some LSD, and recalling the plot was quite like that too. Someone was trying to blow him up (or maybe he was trying to blow someone else up). He made friends with a sensible but troubled policewoman and a sexy waitress who seems to have known him in a past life. There was a vicious gangster who had a brother who didn’t exist but then did, or something. And a suitcase. Was that important? There was someone called Lena Pascal, who was very important but I had no idea why. And at the end: did Jamie Dornan…turn out to be a baddie? Or was he dead? Nope, it’s gone. All I have is a selection of random images and half-connections.”
Yes, I think Mr. Leith has hit on a very pertinent issue with modern television – with so much choice available, and so much money floating around with which to make second, third and fourth seasons – it is proving practically difficult to keep picking up the thread with every new season of the shows we enjoyed in season 1. As I said on social media last year, “Generally, I don’t want a second series of TV drama shows - I mostly wish they didn’t exist. I know all the financial incentives behind making second and third series, but I usually want the writers and producers to show the skill and creative efficiency to wrap things up in one series.”
I enjoyed The Tourist, but like Sam Leith, so much has happened in life since then, with so many shows, films, books, people, creative projects, etc competing for our time and our short-term memory capacity, I really wish the show could have been wrapped up neatly in one season. Naturally, it’s a difficult balance to strike. Some shows (This is England, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Line of Duty, Black Mirror) are so good that I never mind a new series coming out. But the majority of shows – even the good ones – become burdensome if the producers don’t know when to stop, especially given the plethora of other competing shows, and the commitment costs to viewers of an overcrowded market.
There are other downsides too, like diminishing marginal utility derived from an overabundance of episodes or seasons. And alongside the decline of these incremental gains, there are opportunity costs, both in terms of what the audience could be watching/doing instead, and what the writers, producers and actors could be creating instead. Great screenwriters adhere to the mantra “Enter Late, Exit Early”, which means entering a scene at the latest possible moment, and exiting at the earliest possible moment. This rids the script of extraneous dialogue, and keeps the pace of the story relentless.
The art of good storytelling is knowing when to start and when to stop, and ensuring a balance between creative integrity and economic profitability. Sadly, too many producers of TV dramas and movie franchises know when to start but not when to stop – where what could have been a neat, nicely wrapped up single TV series (like Broadchurch, Westworld, Yellowjackets, Killing Eve, Big Little Lies, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc) goes on for one or more seasons too many.
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