how many episodes should a normal tv season be?

as many as it takes, and not one more

Needs "depends, innit" option

Yeah - many UK shows seem to have the six-episode order down fine, most good US cable dramas seem to have nailed 13, and there are some network shows that can handle the full 22. Really depends on the show.

Are there any current shows running over 24 episodes per season?

How many episodes of Glee are there going to be?

Party Down needs more episodes. How I Met Your Mother could probably lose a few per season easy.

varies obv but went for 10

6 wd be enough for something like the thick of it where the script is super compressed, 13 was good for the sopranos

Are there any current shows running over 24 episodes per season?

The Office (US) had 25 this year. They couldn't handle it. Community also had 25, and handled it brilliantly.

hmm, the one anime series I used to watch only went beyond 24 episodes a season a couple of times. felt like more. I think they compensated though by having like 2 or 3 seasons a year.

I remember single season anime series going to 26 all the time in the '90s - made sense, seemed like a lot of them doubled their order halfway through or something from 13, often putting a recap episode at the middle. Not sure if that's still happening today.

Really surprised that they went to 25 for Community, considering it's the first season! The Office I'm not so surprised, since they're obviously really cheap to film and NBC loves doing special one-hour episodes that are usually overstuffed.

the office handled big episode orders pretty well in early seasons, there should be a rule that later seasons have progressively fewer episodes.

i think 22 eps is almost always too long for 40-min shows. 'the west wing' managed to be flat-out awesome for four seasons at that length, but 12-13 is more comfortable.

the fact that HIMYM/30 Rock/________ maintain quality for that length of time is amazing to me

most of the nbc comedies went long this season to compensate for the jay leno show fiasco, i think.

Part of me is glad to have 20-24 episodes of procedural/cop shows that I like, because even when the cases are sometimes a dud, the character arcs are still advanced. If CSI:LV went down to 13 eps (even in a post-Gil Grissom world), I'd feel cheated.

the wire did pretty well with like 11-13 episodes a season

most good US cable dramas seem to have nailed 13

Just thinking about Mad Men S4 only being two months away is making me inexplicably excited!

that's pretty explicable imo

True, but it just came out of nowhere all of a sudden.

Rocky and Bullwinkle seasons are 52 episodes. One a week, no matter what. That's a work schedule, yo.

As the person who actually started this discussion (see IT Crowd thread -- I'm watching it via Netflix and was amazed to learn there were only six episodes per, uh, "series") (by the way, can I say that word makes no sense, how can a series have more than one series?), I'm voting a dozen and saying now I wonder if Brits are just plain lazy.

Not as much money available in the UK and a smaller pool of talent, I'd say

it is weird and i've started saying 'season'

but there are comparable things -- with magazines, you get 'new series'

xpost

Splitting things into series makes more sense than a year-long "season".

xp You do?? (Honestly don't think I've ever heard that in ref to magazines before, either. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.)

But most "seasons" don't last a whole year, do they?

And the whole thing is a TV series. Couldn't they at least come up with a new word?

But most "seasons" don't last a whole year, do they?

No, but many of them last more or less than 13 weeks. And while it is the same word for both uses in Britisherland, I can't think of an instance where this has ever caused me any confusion.

Have definitely seen "new series" or "series A/B/C" with academic periodicals.

Oh well, all ILX threads turn into "Britishers are dumb and stupid for doing this thing Britishers have always done", carry on.

This is a fair question I've never thought about til the IT crowd thread! For some reason UK sitcoms are succinct and punchy enough that 6 or 8 eps of Young Ones/Father Ted/Black Books/IT Crowd is fine, but I'll happily digest 12/16 + eps of Simpsons or X Files.

Longer than about 16 and I do get a bit wtf though. For half hour shows yeah its ok. I couldnt imagine Breaking Bad having a 16 episode season though, jesum crow.

On the IT Crowd thread too someone made the valid point that US shows have writing teams. UK shows often work on a 1-2 person deal, and srsly, if I had to come up with a show a week for 6 months, I'd die.

I think some shit UK TV shows, like "My Family" for instance, have if not writing teams then different people writing different episodes

Yeah Sorkin is the only writer to try a 20+ season right? Which tells the real answer is

http://www.emobilez.com/iphone-wallpapers/data/media/29/scarface_tony_montana_cocaine.jpg

show -> series -> episode

I Love Lucy was written by the same two people the whole time. Susan Miller wrote or cowrote every episode of Soap. And I believe Barney Miller was written by the same person for the first season or so.

My Family and 2 Pints of Lager both have writing teams and are both horrible horrible shite. I find all too often that while American seasons last far more episodes, the Brit shows tend to cram as much into a half hour episode as about two-or-three US 45 mins. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - US shows benefit from being a lot more cinematic, more room for pauses in speech, long lingering shots etc, which is what arguably makes a lot of HBO seasons so great. Then again, I missed a couple of episodes of True Blood and V, and realistically didn't need to go back and watch them - it really didn't feel as though I'd missed out on much when picking up an episode or two later.

I think though, that with cleverer Britcoms like Psychoville for example, they really did manage to juice those 7 episodes for all they were worth.

Brit shows tend to cram as much into a half hour episode as about two-or-three US 45 mins

i don't think this is remotely true

british drama is an embarrassment

and so is british comedy tbrr

As I said, smaller talent pool

Susan Miller wrote or cowrote every episode of Soap.

I meant Susan Harris, of course.

smaller talent pool

think it's just a *worse* talent pool

13 because Doctor Who series length has always felt quite satisfying

I was trying to be fair (xp)

british drama is an embarrassment

and so is british comedy tbrr

put the 'compared to maybe 20% of overall US TV output' after that or stfu

the NFT did a season recently about how the 00s was a "new golden age" of british tv drama and im like *no, it wasn't*

british drama is an embarrassment

and so is british comedy tbrr

Yeah, i don't agree with this. US drama is in fact very good compared to a lot of UK stuff, but there have been some fantastic British dramas throughout the years - and I def do not agree about comedy.

lol i stopped saying long ago how great american telly was when i remembered mad men and 30 rock != all american telly

but the best british tv doesn't represent 'all british tv'

argument dismissed

13 because Doctor Who series length has always felt quite satisfying

but Doctor Who used to be 26-32 eps per series

like, for almost the entire run

Either 13 or 24 depending on the type of show. 13 for a drama, 24 for a sitcom makes sense to me.

Brit shows tend to cram as much into a half hour episode as about two-or-three US 45 mins

This sounds nuts to me, but maybe we're just thinking of different shows -- it certainly doesn't apply to any Brit or US shows I've watched lately. (Including IT Crowd in the former case, which is the show that started this disussion, and which I like a lot anyway.)

yeah it just isn't true

how many british shows have you ever watched before, that you never noticed the length of a season?

btw I started trying to check my Dr Who assertion and it looks like they got as many as 44 or 49 eps one year??!?!? have to count again when not drunk.

no there are at least half a dozen. Sky started making their own shows more regularly by the late 90s and channels like Paramount have had comedy shows made solely for them.

no. it's a bit different, hard to explain. i'd say there are five principal channels. two of them are *supposed to be* kind of vaguely non-pabulum-y, but that's a complete fiction at this point.

bbc 1 and 2 have some original drama. itv1 has some terrible original drama. channel 4 has an ever-dwndling amount of original drama. all four do comedy, to an extent. and then there's channel 5, which shows imports and movies.

oh yeah: 2, 4, and 5 all show more documentaries than US tv stations, i'd guess.

xp

sky and paramount are pay-channels

It's weird, cause our public station (PBS) doesn't really do original drama/comedies AFAIK, just children's programming, some talk programming (like Charlie Rose) and a lot of cultural broadcasts (Operas, some Classic Movies, stuff like that).

the bbc is way better funded than PBS -- every household pays over £100 a year for it, and bbc1 is probably the most popular station overall.

well, for a long time a lot of the drama/comedies on PBS were imported BBC stuff like Dr. Who and Red Dwarf (xpost)

The majority of British TV comedy thesedays seems to be of the panel show variety, not yr actual sitcom or standup vehicle.

Still insane that Al Murray's sitcom on Sky did actually run for 22 episodes in its first series, and the second run still had twice the usual no. of episodes. not sure Richard Herring ever recovered.

stand up became quite big again tho, with BBC backing Live At The Apollo. surprised ITV and C4 haven't responded in kind.

surprised ITV and C4 haven't responded in kind.

you make it sound like a stand-off over the straits of taiwan or something... appropriately

Since Britisher TV series/seasons/whatever are so short, what do they use to fill space for the rest of the year?

American series/seasons/whatever, duh!

kinda wish American television would show BBC shows during summer + winter breaks from new programming. tho i kinda dig that some networks are showing original programming during the summer.

current american TV vs current british TV would be uggggggggggggly

what do we even have to go to bat? the thick of it?

miranda

Come Dine With Me

what was the last great UK drama? bleak house?

some people ride for red riding

oh yeah, forgot abt that

That was not good

Never mind great

not me it sucked (lol xp)

it really does depend on the format like whoever sd that network procedurals benefit from extended runs otm but character-driven dramas do better with a shorter run. comedies can vary - some of the early simpsons seasons ran over 24 episodes & those are classic - but i think generally anything over 22 is pushing things. for british shows the ideal # of episodes wld 0, because they are terrible

i didn't like it and it's kind of three lil movies n e way

looking forward to the US remake of Ashes To Ashes...

Could it be any worse than the original?

most definitely

Undoubtedly. Then it would be very very bad indeed.

miranda

Ugggggggghhh

Yeah I think the answer to xhuxk's question is basically there is a lot more "factual" programming - news, current affairs, documentaries, etc.

i don't really get why all this talk of US/UK TV like there should be a contest. The UK's best shows are pretty much un-makeable in the US as much as the other way round. We should appreciate those differences. Anyone who entirely dismisses any/all examples from either is a moron obv.

"talk of US/UK TV like there should be a contest."

I feel like socialized medicine being a kind of contest helped the US bill go through, so if turning TV into a contest does something similar, it'll be worth it.

A better analogy for the BBC = CBC with better funding. CBC produced its own shows (Kids in the Hall being the best known), but lacks the funding that BBC gets and so it also imports stuff (from BBC (Coronation Street), and a little bit from US TV (um, Arrested Development)).

we have a black lead character in cop drama, and you don't (jokes)

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01474/idris_1474897c.jpg

lulz Homicide ftw

6 for UK, 24 for US

The British six-episode comedy series is more a less an unbreakable tradition now as far as I can see. The brilliant second series of Father Ted managed ten with no filler, but that really is an exception.

American sitcoms tend to be more character and plot-based and benefit from more breathing space. A six-episode season of Friends would be pretty lame, you need to build up familiarity with the characters to make a lot of the jokes hit home. Still think 22 eps can lead to reduced quality control. Curb does pretty well with ten.

13 seems to work well for dramas. Britain's most popular drama (Doctor Who), has 13, BTW.

no so much a drama, more a kids' show

The problem with 6 eps is that with something like Peep Show, which is 100% unadulterated genius, you anticipate a new series for years and then in three weeks it's half over which is depressing.

It's stupid to t/s with UK and US comedies as both have some fantastic stuff. Having lived in both places, I like having a tv in the UK as there's generally something worth watching on. I have not felt this in the US as the overall quality is really quite shite - I can happily live without tv here and just see the must-see stuff (Damages, 30 Rock, etc) either in box set or other means. This could be down to not having grown up with shows that everyone here watches (SNL, Late Show or whatever), it's true.
NB I am a real TV lover, not some "i'm above TV" snob.

13 is the number

xpost. I've had the same experience... lived in UK and Canada, and I think it does probably come down to your experiences growing up. I don't have a TV now in Canada, I catch most of what I like online, but I do miss it on occasion when NHL playoffs roll around, etc. Whereas in the UK things like the Christmas TV programming meant nothing to me since its not a tradition here, and I didn't care about cricket/football or shows about buying Spanish property.

no so much a drama, more a kids' show

some kids shows are also dramas.

sic i meant just the new series

you only feel that way because it's a relief to have three-good-eps/ten-piles-of-RTD-and-Chibnall over with. 26 eps of Baker, T. or Pertwee a year would still rule

Yeah, admittedly, that's part of the thing, since I haven't watched many other Brit shows lately. Can't remember what the last one was, tbh. Maybe even The Office!

but The Office was EXPLICITLY SMUG about doing only two series of six eps! and whatever shows you watched before would have been similar lengths (Ashes To Ashes, cited a bit above, was eight per)

even UK panel/variety shows (like Gnorton, Parky, Jools, QI) only run 8-12 eps. 0ur r1p0ff of Ne\/er M!nd The Buzzc0ck5 belts out a whopping 43 a year (taping ten or so at a time then resting for months IIRC)

U mean Good N3wz week?

N○.

O wait thats HIGNFY. Ok Im not sure what yr referring to then unless its rokwiz or sommat.

You're getting war/\/\er.

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I voted 19, on the reasoning that prime time and prime numbers should go hand in hand.

10, max

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