Why are TV seasons so short these days?
The very first season of Doctor Who had 42 episodes, the latest has eight
No it isn’t just you. Many of your favourite television shows have fewer episodes these days. Take Doctor Who, which is having its finale over the weekend. The most recent series had just eight episodes this run, compared to the 13 it had when it relaunched back in 2005.
Twenty years ago Friends used to have up to 24 episodes a series and Desperate Housewives had around 23. These days you would be lucky for any show to get into double figures. The Bear, which is returning for a new series on Disney+ this month, has ten episodes. The other big television show right now, Bridgerton, just has eight episodes in season three, with Netflix dropping four episodes in two instalments. And the fourth series of the show may not air until 2026.
So why has there been such a change in the number of episodes in such a short period of time? It's partially down to the gradual decline of traditional US network television. For decades, networks such as NBC, ABC and CBS relied on a model where their biggest shows would launch all in the same week in the Autumn, sometimes against each other in the same time slot (I know, wild!), and then release new episodes once a week until late Spring the following year.
The advertising revenues that would come in for these networks sustained such long seasons. And if a television show was lucky to pass 100 episodes in its run, it paved the way for the show to then be syndicated to other networks, bringing in even more cash.
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Falling audiences and advertising (along with the writing and actors strike last year) slowed down the number of shows on these networks and the number of episodes that end up airing. And thanks to the writing and acting strikes, Grey’s Anatomy aired ten episodes in its current season compared to the usual 20 or so. And thanks to the rise of streamers, who buy a lot of US network television anyway, there isn’t so much of a need to reach that magical 100.
At the same time, we’ve had the rise of the streamer’s own shows. Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, two of the pioneering bingeable shows on streaming, had 13 episodes each for their debut series when they first aired in 2013. And since then, you don’t see many streamer shows go over that number.
Their model relies on multiple episodes dropping at the same time, as audiences are expected to binge them in only a few days or weeks, rather than spread their viewing over months. And these days streamers are releasing episodes in sets to keep you subscribing for longer, rather than switching or ditching when you’ve seen them all.
Another explanation for shorter series is simply down to the level of production viewers now expect from their television. A lot of shiny releases from streamers are not too dissimilar from the size and scale of a Hollywood film. With Doctor Who, the BBC/Disney+ collaboration increased the show’s budget, which might make you think think there will be an expanded series, but showrunner Russell T Davies told Temple of Geek that as a result of the new structure “actually [makes it a] more complicated show to make now, so it takes us as long to make the nine now as it did to make the original fourteen.”
A shorter season can also be to the benefit of the creators who don’t have to draw out plots for two thirds of the whole year. Bridgerton showrunner Jess Brownell told Tudum it was a creative choice, saying “there is a natural structure to eight episodes, and we’ve done it actually every season.”
So why is it, when it feels like there is more television to watch than ever, that some big shows with fewer episodes can end up leaving you short? With Doctor Who, although the show has been a return to form, fewer episodes packed with adventures have resulted in the characters having less downtime to hang with each other, which means that it is harder for us to work out what makes them tick.
I’ve been rewatching Desperate Housewives lately (don’t judge me) and what stands out is that having many more episodes, with a range of intense and more relaxed plots, can make the unexpected twists all the more shocking.
Having fewer episodes of shows is not really so much of a problem in the UK. The challenge right now is that fewer shows are making it to air in the first place. Lower advertising income on commercial channels and rising cost of drama on the BBC, as well as a licence fee freeze, has resulted in far fewer programmes being made than normal. As a result, many freelancers who make the TV industry have been out of work for months. Here’s hoping that things pick up as the economy improves.
So whilst there are fewer shows being made in the US, at least there can’t be any fewer in the UK. It can be summed up in a joke by Tahani (Jameela Jamil) in the NBC sitcom The Good Place. “It ran for 16 years on the BBC,” she said, referring to a fictional British show. “It did nearly 30 episodes."
The Doctor Who finale Empire of Death will hit BBC iPlayer and Disney+ internationally on 22 June.
