[pcthrowaway]

I'm astounded that this article doesn't mention what to me seems like a no-brainer: We're in the golden age of television. People don't want to watch 10, unconnected movies now. They want 10-20 hours of a continuous story. Netflix, Apple TV, Prime, and other streaming platforms have been delivering a quality experience that immerses the viewer in an engagement that film can't compete with on depth, world-building, etc.

I'm not trying to suggest film isn't an art form in itself, that often has significant differences from television, but watching trends have been favouring television over film lately, especially by hour watched.

[bmitc]

Almost all modern TV series are just a movie spread out over entire TV seasons. They are filled with nothing but teasers and cliff hangers in order to artificially stimulate intrigue and extend the relatively thin plots. I can barely imagine something more boring than modern streaming TV series. They also tend to devolve into characters forming romantic relationships with each other, because there's usually nothing else to do with a small and finite character set once the initial ideas are exhausted.

Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.

The trends of TV have more to do with attention span, addiction, marketing/advertising, etc. than it being a supposedly more wanted format for actual content reasons.

[pcthrowaway]

I'm sorry, but I think this is an incredibly reductive take on television.

You could make all the same arguments about novels vs. short stories. The fact is that they're both related forms of art which take different approaches to developing narratives.

> Movies are far deeper because they try to focus on a coherent story and character development. The incentives for TV series are all wrong aside from episodic comedies and docuseries.

Here you seem to be arguing that movies, as a form, are superior (or perhaps that TV can't practically compete with film because the incentives are wrong, so that in practice, films are higher quality than TV).

I wasn't making an argument about the potential of the form though, merely about what viewers want. It should go without saying that in long-form writing you have more of an ability to develop characters, stories, and plot arcs than in short-form writing. These more fully developed characters, stories, and plot arcs are more compelling to readers/viewers.

Historically, this is why we've rarely seen short stories achieve the same level of commercial success as the successful novels, and now that we have the internet, the barriers[1] to television asserting the same dominance over videographic media have been torn down.

edit: And to be clear, I also disagree that in practice, television (as produced) is inferior to film (as produced). Of course there is plenty of filler and contrived drama in television (this has always been the case in film too), but we're in a renaissance of television shows which are incredibly tightly written and even dense, from a storytelling perspective.

[1]: namely, that you couldn't run a movie/episodes for 10+ hours on television, due to the complexity around scheduling slots, so you'd have to break it up, leading to confusion and fragmentation of understanding among the viewership

[stevage]

It honestly doesn't sound like you have watched many modern series at all.

[bmitc]

What's a good one that you think I might have missed?

[pcthrowaway]

My picks for "best TV of the last decade": Better Call Saul, Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones (S1-5 only), Undone, and The Expanse. Maybe an honourable mention to Black Mirror, Bojack Horseman, and Silicon Valley.

I have some others I'd personally rate up there, but which are probably more niche (not as widely appealing).

[bmitc]

I have actually seen some of those, including two (Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones) to fruition. Those two are actually excellent examples of what I am talking about, and you even called it out by cutting off the later seasons of Game of Thrones.

The types of TV series that are not episodic seem to always devolve in this way towards worse quality and inter-character romantic relationships, not to mention having cliff hangers at the end of every episode. It's a tension and resolve tactic that gets pretty annoying.

[ciupicri]

Black Mirrors is just a bunch of unrelated short stories which aren't that great compared to a movie.

Bojack Horseman is pretty good indeed, but mostly because it's a comedy. The drama isn't very interesting.

I've heard that a character dies in every Game of Thrones episode, which means some characters will lack depth since they won't have the time required to develop it.

[Shorel]

Some of Black Mirror episodes are better than many films, and their concepts would absolutely work if expanded to full length features.

[jdkee]

Best series of the past 20 years is likely Boardwalk Empire.

[Lutzb]

The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad

[sheepybloke]

100% agree with this. TV has allowed writers to take more time with their characters, develop them more, give more time to other storylines and plots, and write more complex and interesting tales. People are also starting to expect more story and plotlines in their content, which I think is another reason movies are getting so much longer, since more time is needed to meet those expectations(see The Irishman). In the end, it's hard for movies to match the potential of a good TV series, just because a TV series has more time available to explore the universe of the series.

[skydhash]

I watched “1899” last week and it was excellent. The characters seems real despite the very slow revealing of their backstories. I can’t stand most blockbuster movies. There’s always so much action going on that characters and plot suffer. No real dialogue between people. Just exposition and one-liners. And everything seems to be rushing. Compare Black Addams to Dune. Mad Max was also fast-paced, but the director knows that and focuses on the action to describe the characters instead of adding useless one-liners and forced jokes.

[quickthrowman]

> I'm astounded that this article doesn't mention what to me seems like a no-brainer: We're in the golden age of television.

I disagree, the golden age of television was the late 90s to early 2010s, from the start of the Sopranos, to the last episode of Breaking Bad. I can’t name a series in the last 10 years that is on par with Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, or The Wire.

Streaming services killed quality television, House of Cards was the beginning of the end.

[pcthrowaway]

This really comes down to opinion, and I happen to think there are comparable shows which have aired in the last year (Better Call Saul is as good as, if not better than Breaking Bad in my opinion)

But I think it's silly to argue about that ;) The golden age for you might not be the golden age for me, and most people. Personally, not having to sit through a million ads when I watch TV now makes the TV-watching experience leagues beyond what we had in the late 90s (and sure, we've had some phenomenal shows since Breaking Bad; I'd personally nod at Atlanta, High Maintenance, Maniac, Severance, Game of Thrones S1-5, Undone, and The Expanse)

But we also have access to everything from the 90s and noughts, without the ads and waiting for new episodes

The point I was making in the GP post was that people now have easy access to the long-form storytelling of TV shows, without interruptions and nonstop ads, in a way that didn't exist 10+ years ago. Whether or not you think the TV shows today are better than the ones from the late '90s, people nowadays are choosing watch more TV and less film.

[mecha_ghidorah]

The first season of True Detective was in my opinion the greatest single season of tv I've ever seen

[pcthrowaway]

If not for the end of the season, I'd agree with you 100%. It was really a phenomenal moment in television (especially that wonderfully choreographed tracking shot). But the finale was somewhat of a letdown, and the following seasons even moreso.

But it is a good example of the advantages of the television over film. An excellent, self-contained story presented over the course of ~9 hours.

[mecha_ghidorah]

I actually didn't find the finale a letdown to be honest, though I can understand why some people did

[62951413]

If not for Taylor Sheridan I'd agree with you.