I was brought up in a country where syndication was unheard of, so I only ever watch things from the start*: I don't dip in and out. In the UK, throughout my childhood, TV series were usually something like six episodes. This meant they were universally one episode "set-up", four and a half episodes of "journey", and the last half of an episode was "denouement". Nowadays the UK has followed the US lead in having a full season of 6-30 episodes ending on a cliff-hanger that will only be resolved if the series is renewed, so eventually there will be an unresolved cliffhanger (that normally has nothing to do with the series original premise, because of the twists and turns of each individual season). The X-Files is a classic of the form: it had monster of the week episodes (of varying quality) with an overarching arc that hooked viewers but never got resolved. After the first season it rapidly became "Bert & Doris investigate weird things" every week, and it lost the coherence of the story arc.
It took me a long time to break the habit of expecting the "traditional" form, but even now I still demand an ending a lá "The Fugitive" to be provided, that makes sense of the overarching story. If I don't get that, I can't abide the series (no matter how "good" the hook/ stories/ production values are.
... I watch TV independently of SWMBO (she is a soap opera addict), so fortunately I am not restricted to stuff she likes.
* the first time: thereafter I am happy to watch random episodes in any order, if I liked the show enough.
When I was in Brasil, for 3 weeks, back in the stone age, I would watch evening television in an effort to obtain some knowledge of Portuguese. Their telenovelas were world class, and not without an element of humor. Plus, pretty much everyone in the country watched them (O Globo is a media conglomerate that publishes a major newspaper and has the major tv network) so you could discuss developments with random strangers. But the curious thing was that they lasted for about 3 months and then they were on to a new program. No 50 years of
As the World Turns for these guys, no! And my mother used to keep the tv on a single channel all day, so I was treated to endless afternoons of televised dramas and related commercials for laundry soap and diapers. But I don't really have much of a taste for them.
That said, I can appreciate them for a few reasons: steady employment for aspiring actors who can try to move up to something better, the utterly over the top campy plots and characters (so you know the writers were finding ways to amuse themselves aside from the regular paychecks), and the social cohesion factor -- it's something you can discuss with random supermarket clerks as the checkout aisles are populated with tabloids and magazines like
Soap Opera Digest.
We have gotten accustomed to the six episode season of many BBC productions and have trouble wrapping our brains around the seemingly arbitrary decisions to discontinue otherwise brilliant television series. My husband frequently complains about the limit of "Indian Summers" to a mere two seasons. We would expect the BBC to be more independent of viewer reception, but maybe I misunderstand how these are funded or decisions made about which shows to produce or continue.
On the other hand, I think the U.S. could have been better off without emulating many of the British reality shows that we've imported and then spun off -- resulting in even more crass series. That "Weakest Link" lady was simply cruel and without any humor whatsoever. I partially blame you guys for the mediocre real estate developer that managed to become President mostly for being on tv and ostensibly firing people. We sure could have done without that.
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