I watch a lot of American TV, obviously. In America, TV shows get cancelled if enough people don´t watch them. This can happen at any time. Keeps the creators on their toes at all time. Entertainment Darwinism.
I also watch a lot of British TV and Japanese cartoons. In these countries, shows are typically produced one season at a time. With rare exceptions, they are guaranteed at least one full season, so they get cut a bit more slack, and get time to “grow the beard” (like STTNG did at the same time that Riker, well, grew a beard).
Yeah, a British show is maybe ten episodes a season, even shorter for sitcoms. Still, they know exactly how long they can expect to air at a minimum.
Japanese cartoons are typically either 13 or 26 half-hour episodes. Most shows only get one season so they have to work up to some kind of climax that could serve as an end to the series if they don´t get a second season. More like miniseries, in a way.
I think the British system is better in theory because it means a show won’t get cut off mid-season or without a chance for the story to be wrapped up in some way, but as Alessan mentioned, a series in Britain is like six episodes, so it depends on what is more appealing: a short season that we’ll definitely get to the end of, or a season that, if successful, could last for 20-24 episodes, but has a bigger chance of being cut off halfway through with no resolution.
Let’s be perfectly honest; most American TV shows that are cut off early deserve it. There are cases of worthy shows that were cut off before a resolution to the story could be achieved, but to be honest they’re awfully few in number. For every “Firefly,” there are a hundred shows like “girls club” and “That 80’s Show” that were justifiably executed.
Speaking as a Canadian, and therefore a resident of a country where almost all quality TV is foreign, it strikes me as nutty to suggest there’s anything “wrong” with the American system of producing television shows, when one considers the vast number of amazingly high-quality shows the USA has given us.
This happens a lot in Japan, too. Many of the best shows simply never got another season, often leading to a really bad ending because they had to wrap everything up in two episodes. Cowboy Bebop, for instance: it didn’t get renewed (among the greatest and most popular series ever, and they couldn’t spring for a second season?). There’s a massive change in the series tone right when it happened, as if the makers themselves got depressed. The last few episodes have been known to make kittens cry tears of agony.
Oh yeah. Even the iconic Haruhi Suzumiya didn´t get a second season until three years after the first (I didn´t think it would happen). That would never happen in the US. Here, you´ll get episodes until the show jumps the shark, and possibly considerably longer.
If anything, it seems like the Japanese broadcasters are even stricter than the American ones. I´m guessing that whether an anime gets a second season has a lot more to do with merchandising and DVD sales than is the case for live action shows though. This is probably the case for cartoons in the rest of the world too.
However, since the chances of getting a second season in Japan are so low, and third seasons are almost unheard of (unless it´s a Shonen Jump series, in which case it´ll go on forever), the creators take care to wrap everything up in a satisfactory way (translation: they´ll turn the last to eps into massive tear-jerkers which, of couse, is wonderful). I believe Disney has an upper limit of 65 episodes. They allowed Kim Possible to have an extra season because it was just that good, even though they brought it to a great conclusion before it got the extra season. That´s way better than letting shows run forever like The Simpsons.
If I could dictate things to TV stations - which I can´t, obviously, barring a successful revolution - I would tell them give every cancelled show something like three specially written episodes to wrap everyting up nicely if they got cancelled.
I bet those “last chance” episodes would become something of an artform in themselves where the producers would try to outdo each other in finishing of their series in the most spectacular manner possible. I´m talking light saber duels between Kirk and Spock here.
Hey, that’s why I love the show. They probably had a considerably bigger budget on Samurai Champloo (well, at least it looks that way, Samurai is better looking), but it really didnt have the same level of talent on its stories and its pacing.
Besides, the melancholia feel of Cowboy Bebop was there from the start, and is quite common to the most famous animes (Cobra and Harlock spring to mind, especially Cobra since it shares so many things wih Cowboy).
Look at the movie too, is the Cowboy Bebop movie better than the series?
No, it´s not, and that would be a whole thread of its own: why are there so many great anime series, and so few (comparatively speaking, of course) anime movies? I´m guessing this has something to do with being used to have comic books as source material, but this is probably not always the case.
For that matter, aren´t movies based on TV shows almost always worse? They only need to get you to buy a ticket, not make you come back.
Doesn’t this depend on the odds of creating a good show in the first place?
If there are 30 new shows in an American television season, I may find, if I’m lucky, three that are worth a second episode. The length of the season after that isn’t a huge concern. It’s getting to the second or third show that’s the huge step.
I have to assume that British system calls for many more new shows every season than the American one. The question becomes: if 100 new shows get introduced in that time span are 10 worth watching? Or are the other 70 mostly crap and I’m still getting only three watchable shows a year?
I don’t know, and I don’t see how you can answer the question without knowing that.
It’s my (limited) understanding that many British and Japanese TV shows are designed to only last a season or two. That is, they aren’t necessarily canceled at all, but were written like an American miniseries to tell a specific story and then stop. When I was living in Japan there was a popular drama series called Crying Out Love In the Center of the World (I think it sounds less awkward in Japanese) that was an adaptation of a bestselling novel, and AFAIK it was always intended to end when the novel ended and not come back for another season.