In the US, we call a TV show with multiple episodes a “series”, referring to all episodes, across years. Each new year of shows is called a “season”.
In the UK, they refer to each season as a “series”. So what do they call the whole thing, across all the years of episodes?
I’m pretty sure they just call it a series too. Or programme. BBC One refers to Spooks as a drama series, for example.
Series.
“Series 2 of the series”?
Coronation Street. It’s been on, like, forever.
Pretty much. Although it probably wouldn’t be constructed that way. It would be “Series 2 of Coronation Street”. But yes, the same word is used for both.
Question for the Brits: Do you guys recignize that having two different words adds utility?
A quick example is in tv guide listings it will label episodes “**Season **Premiere/Finale” or “**Series **Premiere/Finale.” I know it would bug me if every year my favorite shows had a “Series Finale” that could ambiguously refer to the series being cancelled instead of just the season ending.
I think that there have always been so many other differences between the way episodic television is organised here than in the US that this has just been a minor one. The difference in length of a series (season) is often quoted, but that’s not the only one. Until very recently we didn’t have the same definite idea of seasons (as in the time of year this time) here. Yes, September/October has always been the time where a big new programme would be likely to be launched, but it’s not nearly so much of a given as it seems to be in the US. New programmes are introduced throughout the year and the notion of something like a ‘mid-season replacement’ is just unheard of.
There’s other aspects of the fairly rigid tv year that you seem to have that just baffle us too. The idea that you would interrupt the run of a normal programme series to impose a break in the middle, and during that break show repeats out of order just makes no sense here. (I must confess, I still don’t understand why this happens in the US, nor do I get the idea of sweeps, nor do I understand the rules which seem to govern syndication).
Having said all that, things are changing here, and it seems to me that there are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, the influence of satellite/cable tv, particularly Sky who seem to have a much more US approach to TV, as opposed to the terrestrial focus on the UK. They are much more likely to show US series and, importantly, to show them with a much reduced delay from their US transmission. If a new series airs in the US starting in September, say, it may begin in the UK now a month or less later. This means that we’re much more aware of the US timing. It may be, for example, that the mid-season break is forced on us as we catch up to the US schedule and run out of new episodes to show. This is also what I meant by Sky’s US approach to tv - they are happy to say things like ‘part 2 of the season starts next week’ for instance, which would have caused outrage in the Shires (well, some loud tutting and sighing) in the past, but seems to be accepted now. This is something we just haven’t come across on terrestrial tv. The time lag really hit us last year (was it last year?) during the writers’ strike when we caught up really quickly because new programmes weren’t being made.
The other thing which seems to have had an impact is the widespread availability of US tv programmes on DVD etc, which seem all to use the season/series terminology. I think that most people get what’s referred to and are happy with the terminology.
Ellis Dee yeah, we get that, but it’s really not that big a deal. The terms you mention are also recent imports, I’d say. Historically we’d see listed ‘new series’ or ‘first episode in the new series’ and ‘last in the series’ rather than ‘premiere’ or ‘finale’. The BBC particularly used to leave it up to the continuity announcer to speak over the closing credits ‘That was the last in the current series of Twee Drivel. It will return in the new year’ etc etc. (I miss the fact that in my youth this was often at certain times of the year followed up with something along the lines of ‘Melvyn Hayes is currently appearing as Widow Twankey in Aladdin at the Northampton Megabowl’).
The ABC here in Australia still announces things along those lines: “That was the final of this series of Funny Britcom, but in case you missed the rest of it, it’s available on DVD from ABC stores and all good DVD retailers. Tune in next week for Another Britcom, and coming up next, it’s Mum & Dad Arguing About Films.”
I addition to what Charley said (cue unintelligible cat noises), a “season” in UK television terms means the entire output of a channel for a quarter of the year, ie 13 weeks, give or take. New shows will typically start their run at (or near) the beginning of a new season, and it’s perfectly possible for a show to have more than one series in a calendar year.
Top Gear, for example, has about 14 episodes a year split into two series. One around winter and the other summer.
Do they call it Eastenders?
It seems to me that the second difference is the direct result of the first. If you only have six episodes of each show, obviously you’d need to be introducing shows throughout the entire year or you’d lose all your advertisers. And for viewers, only having six episodes to look forward to all year seems maddening enough, but I don’t think even you could bear it if all the shows were shown just in the fall.
You know, it didn’t use to be that way. It used to be that a “season” was around 30 episodes that followed roughly the post-secondary school year, that is, from September through April, and re-runs were something reserved for May through September, when the new season started.
Today, it seems, a typical season has shrunk to 22 episodes, from mid-September through mid-May, and the way seasons actually run is (for want of a better word) stupid. They will show five or six new eposides, then a couple of weeks of re-runs, then another four new ones, then three weeks of re-runs, etc. There’s nothing more than tuning in to see a new episode of whatever and then finding out that tonight’s episode is a re-run of one you saw last month.
Why’s it done this way? So the network can make more and more money by selling commercial time at a time they’re keeping production costs down by ordering less episodes.
The last time we talked about shrinking seasons, the person who made the “seasons used to be much longer” claim had to go back to the 50s and early 60s to find these really long seasons people are nostalgic about. If “shorter” seasons have been the status quo for longer than they weren’t…
But that only creates confusion here. People hated the Twin Peaks season two finale because it was billed as a series finale.
I doubt few people are bothered in the UK anyway. Usually, if you like a show, you know if an episode is a season or a series finale.
One more UK example:
Doctor Who is usually grouped into “Episodes” (individual shows), “series” (one story arc), and “seasons.” There are also “doctors” for multiple seasons (e.g., “Third Doctor,” “Tenth Doctor”), but other shows haven’t followed suit.
And “Eras” eg the JNT era, the RTD era. Ok, that’s probably taking it a bit too far.
I think this is mostly down to the influence of the American shows and the rise in DVD box-sets of shows from the USA. I can see more British series moving in this direction.
Not in my experience – a story arc is generally called a “serial” or a “story” rather than a “series”. And the consistent use of “season” appears to be largely a fan convention subsequently adopted by the BBC – during the 60s and 70s the people making the show seem to have used “series” and “season” more or less interchangeably, as they did with other programmes.
I’m with WotNot I haven’t heard that terminology applied to Doctor Who before. Calling a story arc within a (UK) series a ‘series’ in itself would be really confusing for the general audience, although perhaps not for the hardcore fanbase from what you’re saying here.