Television.

It’s been said that the only constant in this world is that everything changes. The world keeps moving, time passes and today becomes tomorrow. I spent a lot of time today thinking about TV shows I used to watch and got nostalgic about it. I’ll be 34 years old soon, so I’ve been around for a pretty good chunk of television history. Some of it was good, and a lot of it was terrible, but TV shows have always been special to me.

Streaming has Changed TV

The more I think about it, I like TV shows more than movies. I like long stories, I like to see lore develop, I enjoy watching characters grow and change. Have you ever jumped into a random episode of a show you’ve never seen before and wondered how the story and characters got to where they were? That feeling of awe is something wonderful, but it’s becoming more rare. Now that we stream TV shows more than we tune in to them on network or cable, we usually start where we want, when we want.

Another change that the dominance of streaming has pushed is for shows to have fewer episodes. Whether you lament the eight-episode season or rejoice over the increased prestige and budgets of modern TV, that’s what’s normal now. I’m watching The Sopranos right now, which is considered one of the first prestige television shows, and it’s almost exhausting to look at how long the seasons are, especially considering how heavy and complex the episodes are.

Many streaming shows have shorter seasons, higher budgets, variances in episode length and uncertain futures. Since streaming services don’t have to compete for air time, shows can be thrown out to the public on a whim and canceled just as quickly. It’s incredible to think we’re living in a time where old TV shows are being revived and rebooted at an alarming rate, while new shows are just waiting to grab an audience. Even if all you have is a couple of subscriptions, you can watch any type of show from almost any era whenever you want. It’s no surprise that so many shows can fly under your radar while you plunge back into your fifth rewatch of Breaking Bad, The Office or Game of Thrones. There’s never enough time in the day to catch everything.

You can Watch Anything

For me, it’s been a chaotic mashup of shows that I jump back and forth with every time I sit down to eat, fold laundry or relax. House of the Dragon Season 2, Suicide Squad Isekai, My Adventures with Superman, Smiling Friends, Hard Knocks, Delicious in Dungeon, The Witcher, Bee and Puppycat, Brooklyn 99, The Crown, The Boys, Invincible, Star Trek: Lower Decks and one episode of Interview with a Vampire that was briefly available on Max. I have to be honest, it was tough to commit to sitting down and writing this instead of catching more Sopranos.

Watching TV taught me a lot about writing. I prefer to write 50,000-150,000 word epic adventure novels, and I think that’s because so much of what I watched felt like one gigantic story. If you could take a long book and adapt it into either a two-to-three hour movie or a full eight or more episode season show, I think the best option is usually going to be the show. Three Lord of the Rings books certainly did best as three movies, but—hear me out—it could have been done well as a show too, with certain criteria met (but that’s another blog post).

Fantasy Shows Deserve Better

Adapting fantasy novels has been really big since Game of Thrones; I have a lot to say:

• Epic-length fantasy deserves long seasons (10-16 episodes at 40 minutes each or 8 episodes of ~60+ minutes).
• One book should be adapted as one season. The author and their editor knew what they were doing by spacing the story the way it was.
• The fewer changes, the better. I’m not asking for absolute adherence to the source material, but in most situations, that’s when adaptations go off the rails.
• You do not need to shoehorn modern sensibilities into fantasy settings. You can if you are good at it, but the social commentary that’s hot today might go over like Rand Al’Thor’s Gen Z broccoli haircut tomorrow.
• Take time to remind the viewer of the journey the characters are on. Use the greater screen time of a TV show to establish settings as they change. The authors do, and that sense of place helps communicate a sense of progress and development too.
• You do not need to up shock value. Fantasy’s strengths lie in character interactions, development, and plot complexity.
• Don’t rush to get to the end. This might be controversial, but I think it’s better to have a show that gets canceled before its arc completes than for the plot to get mashed into too little time. Would it be terrible if Game of Thrones waited for George R. R. Martin to finish the books before the show finished up? Maybe put shows on hiatus instead of cutting them off with finality or rushing.

Let’s Go Back…

As much as I appreciate the dominance of accessible prestige television, I don’t want it to kill off low- and mid-budget shows. The 90s and 00s were full of science fiction that told great stories with mediocre acting and terrible special effects, and I kind of miss shows like that. Maybe the pendulum will swing back and we will see a return of garbage TV. You can’t eat a Porterhouse steak every single day; sometimes you just need a greasy fast food burger.

Since TV is always changing with the times, I hope that other old adage about change will apply too: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” If the 90s X-Men show can get picked up again almost 30 years later, maybe we can get more monster-of-the-week shows the way Doctor Who, Star Trek and Supernatural used to be.

Looking to the Future

I’m working on a project that’s designed to push me out of my comfort zone in many ways. It takes a lot of inspiration from network TV dramas from before the streaming era. I don’t know exactly when I’ll officially announce it, get advertising put together and start posting about it here, but I want it to be this year. News will come about it eventually. Have a great summer, everyone.