Why Are Shows so Short?

The first season of Stranger Things aired in July 2016. It was eight episodes long, all of which were eagerly binged by thirteen-year-old me. Now, nearly a full decade later, I am about to graduate from university, and the final season of Stranger Things is nearly upon us. It will, like the first and third seasons, be eight episodes long. Combining that with the second and fourth seasons’ eighteen total episodes, this means that by the time we all finally say goodbye to the town of Hawkins, the show will have aired a grand total of 42 episodes over the course of nine years. 

The Duffer Brothers, the showrunners and writers of Stranger Things, have said that the smaller episode count was designed to help the show feel more cinematic like one long film split into eight parts. This mentality has come to dominate the world of television lately, with the vast majority of shows (especially on streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+) increasingly opting for shorter seasons in the name of keeping things cinematic. There are non-creative reasons for this shift, as well, of course. Streaming networks don’t have to worry about producing 100 episodes for syndication (where studios sell the rights to air the show to other networks) anymore, and the ballooning per-episode budgets of TV series leave far less room for longer seasons. I’m sure there’s a brilliant, insightful article out there somewhere about that second point. 

The reasons for the shift to shorter shows, while important, are not what I’m here to talk about. Instead, I’d like to make my case for why I think the transition to shorter, more cinematic seasons of TV hurts television as a visual storytelling medium. While I do not think every single show must be more than eight episodes (six-episode seasons are a little ridiculous, but with the right script, I’ll let it slide), I think making eight episodes the standard severely limits a lot of the character work and plotlines that are only possible in TV shows. 

To start, if a show follows the new standard structure (six-to-eight-episode seasons with each episode being around an hour), then the plot must be consistently and ruthlessly driven forward at all times to avoid any issues with pacing. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but oftentimes it can come at the cost of the meaningful characterisation only television is capable of. Seasons that are twelve episodes, and especially those that are 23, give the plot time to breathe and leave room for character-focused episodes that, because of many young people growing up with these shorter seasons, are often unfairly maligned as ‘filler’. Other visual mediums simply don’t have the runtime to do this incredibly in-depth and more methodical character work, and I think it’s one of the things that makes television so special.

Beyond character work, longer seasons of television can do some really incredible things with their narratives, especially shows that have season-long (or even series-long) mysteries. A prime example of this is Lost, a mystery show that took the world of television by storm and ran for six seasons, totalling 121 episodes. With the exception of the fourth season, which was shortened due to the Writers’ Strike, each season of Lost featured fifteen 40-minute episodes. There has been substantial debate over how satisfying the answers to Lost’s mysteries ended up being, but it’s undeniable that the lengthy season runtime helped build suspense and intrigue in a way that almost no show since has been able to match. Mysteries like the monstrous noises heard in the forest at the end of the first episode are built up and expanded upon over the course of dozens and dozens of episodes, something that just is not possible with shorter seasons.

At the end of the day, what really matters is the vision of the show’s creative team. If they feel they can tell a compelling story in only six to eight episodes, more power to them. But the push to make this short season length the standard hurts the storytelling potential of television, a medium uniquely suited for larger character arcs and long-running plotlines. Let’s not take that away. 

Illustration by Olivia Little