I like British shows, stuff like Sherlock and Black Mirror are a bit longer than the average sitcom and certainly better produced, written and acted. I can even understand having a brief first season as a trial run to get word of mouth out and gather investors. But those two shows, and quite a few others, are past their first season and they still only put out 3 episodes a year.
Are three episodes a year enough to move boxed sets off the shelves come Christmas Time? Is this a common practice in the rest of Europe? Is it a BBC funding issue?
No it’s common with all UK channels -Black Mirror is a Channel 4 production, for example.
A possible reason is that UK TV doesn’t have “seasons” the way I understand US network TV does, so there’s no overiding need to produce shows to fit a 13 or 26 week slot. What tends to happen is that, say, Tuesday at 9pm is a channel’s “new drama” slot, and shows of varying numbers of episodes are broadcast then.
Another reason I’ve heard is that most non-soap UK shows have only one or two writers, so the output is necessarily limited. (I know there are counter examples from the US like Aaron Sorkin, but he’s mad)
Sherlock is the prime example of the “three episodes a year if you’re lucky” show, but consider that each episode is 90 minutes long - into movie territory really - and the stars, writers and producers have other demands on their time. The Sherlock box sets do very well, I think.
A BBC series of for a sitcom which is roughly analogous to an American season was traditionally 6 half-an-hour (bearing in mind with no adverts, 30 minutes is 30 minutes) episodes long. I think there’s a variety of reasons for this: British sitcoms usually only had a one writer or a team of two writers, no prospect of mid-series cancellation, small casts and budgetary constraints. My recollection is that dramas were a bit more flexible, but in practice that usually meant longer episodes rather than longer seasons.
It’s not that the concept of multiple writers churning out episode after episode is alien to British TV though. There is a well established tradition of soap operas, most of which usually last a lot longer than their American counterparts. For example the oldest English TV soap opera has been going continuously since 1960. However that model was not seen as conducive to producing quality programming. That said since the late 1990s American TV models have become much more influential on British TV, in part due to the success of shows such as Friends and Buffy and the quality of shows such as The Wire and The Sopranos.
The Wire and The Sopranos were both produced in a manner much more similar to the British model — fewer episodes per season, with the whole season written before production begins.
Many (most?) of the high-quality shows on American cable channels do it that way. Coincidence?
They have more writers though and 10-13 episodes are still a lot more than British dramas tend to have. It’s more of a middle ground between the two extremes than anything else.
Soaps with long seasons (or in some continuous for ever ones) have been common on British TV but they belong in a different category to sitcoms. Most sitcoms typically have one, or two writers and the mid-season hiatus is unknown here. There is also less tendency to flog a winning formula into the ground, on the other hand a show has to be really dire to get cancelled in mid-run - most things are allowed to limp to their conclusion.
I’ve heard a few British actors (Stephen Fry, for example) say that American actors and film crew work ridiculous hours, like 12 - 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. Whereas in the UK, they have healthier working hours, which results in less output.
Also, because UK performers aren’t tied into 26 episodes of a single show, they can work on several different projects throughout the year. For example, Charlie Brooker will write a 3-episode season of Black Mirror, present a season of Screenwipe, make guest appearances on a few panel shows, and write a weekly column for the Guardian. David Mitchell will be team captain on a season of Would I Lie to You, host a season of his radio show The Unbelievable Truth, appear on many other panel shows, film a season of a sitcom or sketch show, write another column for the Guardian, and maybe write a book too.
Most British series (especially comedy series) have a single writer (or writing team) – at least in their early seasons. Long-running shows will start to bring in new writers once the original ones grow tired.
This has happened in the US, too (Babylon 5), but it’s a tremendous amount of work to do 22 shows a year. A shorter season allows for the ability to take the time to rewrite until they are at their best. You can also look at a script and discard it if you’re not happy with it, and push back the new season.
Game of Thrones’ (a multinational production) showrunners (American) have said that they would love to do 13+ episodes a season, but the show is so intensive that 10 is their max per season.
The short seasons have grown on me. Selfie, a show that I’m sure the network once intended to go 26 weeks with annual renewals til doomsday, feels like it should have been self-contained in the 13 weeks of the original buy. It wasn’t, though. Maybe the producers would like it to be picked up by cable, but the story is very nearly complete.
Again I suppose I’m more influenced as to my view as to what has made the successful leap onto British TV (though perversely The Wire when shown on British TV was put in a late slot and was barely noticed except by TV critics. It went on to become a big hit though on DVD).
Still 13 episodes per season is much more than your average British series length.
I can’t actually think of a single TV show that has been cancelled mid-series on British TV, except Noel Edmond’s Late, Late Breakfast Show and that happened because a member of the public who was due to appear on the show was killed during rehearsals leading the BBC to be prosecuted by the HSE. Maybe there are other examples but it would be exceptionally rare.
The attitude certainly used to be that once something was filmed, it would be shown. I remember in the late 1990s ITV went out of it’s comfort zone and produced a surreal comedy sketch show. The result was probably the worst TV show I have ever seen: it was surreal in a completely predictable sub-Monty Python way and totally unfunny. ITV still put it on TV- they put it on at about 3AM in the morning probably when they thought all the TV critics were fast asleep.