PBS series like “Bleak House” are based on novels and are created just for a specific run. I should mention that that is actually a British production.
They occupy some kind of ground in between “mini-series” and “series”.
I wish that a network, or HBO would give something like that a try. . .I’d love to see something like “The Grapes of Wrath” done as a 13-15 part series on HBO.
I would assume that there are such high start-up costs with production that it makes an idea like this infeasible. Still, I’d like to see it.
It seems pretty clear to me that the initial six shows were meant to stand alone. If ABC gave them more money they would’ve gone on, I’m sure (I would’ve, I think), but I maintain that they made that set of six as a set unit.
From what I’ve heard (and I don’t have a cite on me, but I think I may have read this in Entertainment Weekly) Prison Break was always planned for two seasons - one breaking out of prison, and one on the run.
The ongoing jokes in Police Squad about the naming of all previously arrested suspects and the number of garbage cans hit equalling the episode number both fairly scram that this was a limited run. I don’t kbnow the details about filming and when the shows were aired, but it seems far more likely that they were asked to do six shows, which they did as a set, than that they put out one episode, were told the series was cancelled, then made the remaining episodes so they fit together with consistent gags.
From what I remember reading in the various Prisoner books, McGoohan originally wanted the show to be only 7 or 8 episodes; he and the producers had the general story arc of “Village torments Prisoner, then Prisoner torments Village” planned out, but never thought they could stretch it out to an entire season. The network didn’t like that idea, and said they would only run the show if McGoohan gave them a full season, so writers were hired to produce 8 or 9 “filler” episodes. This is why you have some stand-alone episodes (like “It’s Your Funeral” and “The Girl Who was Death”) that don’t change the status quo.
I know there is a list floating around somewhere of which episodes were planned from the beginning. Off the top of my head they were: Arrival, Chimes of Big Ben, Free For All, Dance of the Dead, Hammer Into Anvil, Once Upon a Time, and Fall Out. I may be forgetting one.
Accounts differ on how much of the final episode McGoohan had in mind from the beginning, but apparently he wrote the actual script at the last minute. It certainly seems that way when you watch it. (And this is coming from someone who liked the finale.)
I think it’s a difference between British TV and American TV. As I understand it, in British TV a limited number of episodes are bought and produced for a fixed price. Once those episodes are shown, another batch may be ordered.
In American TV, a set number of episodes may be ordered, but if a network cancels the show, the producer only gets a “kill fee” for any episodes that haven’t yet been produced. Plus, the licensing fee the networks pay for first-run shows often doesn’t cover the original cost of production. Thus, the producers are essentially budgeting the shows as a loss-leader, hoping to get enough episodes produced so that the show can eventually be syndicated.
Because the British producer gets the money up front, they’re more willing to produce a batch of episodes that has a definite end point, while an American producer wants to keep the story line open-ended.
From what I understand, Carnivale on HBO was originally written to run one season, with the entire story arc finishing at the end. HBO told Daniel Knauff that he had to extend it beyond one, so he filled out the arc and made it for a planned run of 5 seasons.
Then HBO pulled the plug at the end of season 2.
Dang, I still wanna know how it was going to end!
(Although, on a side note, if you cut out the last 5 minutes of the final episode of season 2, it ends pretty well, even without explaining all the mysteries.)
Although details remain secret, of course, the final episode will probably involve Homer finally destroying the world due to an accident at the power plant. Of course, nobody in Springfield will be surprised- after all, it was bound to happen.
This lack of direction is why I hated X-Files, and refused to watch last season’s multipart sdcience fiction series (like Invasion). Since they don’t have a clear ending, or intend to, it’s just a lot of noise and mirrors presenting a series of revelations that add up to …nothing. The gooal isn’t to arrive anywhere, but to perpetually present a series of new ideas that keep you watching and hoping it’ll all make sense eventually. I blame Twin Peaks for startiing this trend. That show, at first, looked as if it was going to really be something, and it held a lot of promise at first, but it eventually petered out into nothing.
Dunno if this counts, but Star Trek (the original series) had the narrator say in the opening passage: *“Space…The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship, Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!” *.
While I agree that Babylon 5’s bare plot outline was planned, the truth of the matter is that the show did not end as JMS originally planned. He originally planned for
the time travel Sinclair-becomes-Valen episode, War Without End, iirc the title, to be the final episode. He had to shuffle it back to the third season (or was it the fourth), plus with a late renewal for the fifth season, it is basically tacked on to the already concluded series in season four. And the higher-ups demands that he replace Michael O’Hare as the lead character also wreaked some havoc with his plans..
Though as noted, it was planned, just had to be reshaped a few times throughout its run.
I wish more shows would follow the telenovela format, although, as somebody else said, maybe that wouldn’t work with the US system of producing shows. In Korea, they have tons of these little mini-series type shows, and they are ridiculously popular all throughout east Asia. It’ll be the same pool of actors in all of them (albeit a fairly large pool), but I’ve watched many and it’s pretty easy to be hooked in. Most last about 12-14 episodes, with some stretching into 24 or so, but they all have a clear direction and end. It really tightens up the story and increases interest by having a fixed length.
My read on it is that Chris Carter kept painting himself into a corner and cutting through the wall to get out. Every so often, he cut through a load-bearing element, and finally the whole structure teetered and collapsed.
This came up last night when my roommate and I were watching a rerun of the pilot episode of My Name is Earl. At one point, Earl says something like, “One down, 268 to go.” So in theory, at least, the show will stop when Earl’s crossed everything off his list.