Also TV now: This show/movie did well 40 years ago so we rebooted it with people who never saw it, a shitload of special effects, and totally missed why it was popular in the first place.
They did this a lot in the 90’s too. Production companies love to ground an IP into the dust.
That explains why I’m so familiar with boomer shows and movies, despite being a millennial. There was a lot of old content and remakes on TV then.
When I was growing up I thought Gilligan’s Island was a much bigger deal than it actually was.
Tbf back then I wasn’t watching remakes or reboots (mostly, and I know they did make them, but…) I got familiar with those shows by watching the reruns themselves. And even as a kid who wasn’t alive at those shows releases, they still held and in many cases still do hold their original magic. Ex: Golden Girls.
But I type that as my Caddyshack VHS rolls credits so maybe I’m the weirdo. Oh well, I’m alright, nobody worry 'bout me!
NuTrek that you?
Wait… have you also been trying out the MacGyver reboot from 2015???
We don’t talk about that.
I bought the OG McGyver on DVD a few years ago and I was all “I remember this being a lot better than this”
Magnum PI still holds up, at least the first season.
Airwolf, not so much. Same with Hardcastle & McCormick and Riptide. I still liked Knightrider last time I watched an episode, but it was always kinda corny.
Been meaning to watch Simon & Simon next, but haven’t looked for it
Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular …
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film … it’s very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there’s a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
Opposite problem, too. Take what was supposed to be a series and shrink it down to a movie. The Section 31 movie comes to mind. It’s so much better if you view it as if it were the pilot for a new series, but that’s never going to happen.
Also writers: We don’t give a shit about the source material the fans love. Fuck these nerds.
I was so disappointed by the ready player one film and was absolutely flabbergasted when I learned the author was actually actively involved in the film.
I hate when they release streaming shows one episode per week. I am not going to watch it until it’s done and I catch up on other shows. Stop trying to get me to watch weekly, it’s not going to happen. That’s just not how people watch tv anymore.
So a new show to me is new for a solid year before i can get to it sometimes. So many times a show gets cancelled before I can watch it and half the time I lose interest once I know it’s cancelled
I don’t watch a TV show until it is finished, it had a satisfying ending and it is acclamied.
This is how I watched Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos. I loved it.
This is how I avoided watching a single episode of Game of Thrones.
I prefer it that way, because if all the episodes are available at the same time I would just binge it, which always makes me feel bad.
Apparently I have horrible taste because every show i like gets canceled in the first or second season
We should start our own streaming service
With blackjack, and hookers!
forget the blackjack!
Honestly there is so much back catalog to watch, who even needs a flood of new stuff? I can’t possibly keep up.
I mean, this is entirely untrue. There’s a bit in the first episode of the renewed 4th season of Family Guy joking about it. This was 20 years ago. FOX had already stumbled on the “people are more excited about the first season of a show” formula that Netflix wouldn’t adopt for another decade.
And that’s not even considering the graveyard of television in the 80s and 90s. Shows nobody even knew about until they’d been cancelled (American Gothic, the Original Battlestar Galactica, Freaks and Geeks) or shows that flared out from the enormous budget (Alf, Dinosaurs) too soon, but developed cult following after they were gone.
Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug.
On the plus side, it makes fishing for the TONS of shows that never got past a couple airings surprisingly entertaining.
Crap was so ruthless seasons weren’t fully ordered, written or filmed by the time they were on the air because shows would get cancelled overnight, so they were fully ramped up and working without knowing if they’d end the season they were doing at the time. Between that and how much cheaper everything was it’s no wonder no film actors would be caught dead in a TV show until prestige television broke out of that mold.
Between that and how much cheaper everything was
I mean, here’s an article from 1992 complaining that TV costs too much to produce.
I’m sure a proper Marxist could say something about the stead decline of profit. But if TV studios are strapped for cash, you’d never know from that validations of their parent companies.
it’s no wonder no film actors would be caught dead in a TV show until prestige television broke out of that mold.
There was definitely a jump from TV to Movies that people didn’t want to come back from. But there’s also only so many hours in the day, and half of making a movie was the market you did after filming was completed.
But at the end of the day… People remember Cheers and Cosby Show much more vividly than The Critic or Joey.
Hah. That’s a fun time capsule. They’re whining about 1.4 million per episode, which just seems so quaint now. the figures going around are 6 mill per episode in season 1 of Stranger Things and 30 mill per episode in season four. Even adjusted for inflation Quantum Leap wouldn’t know what to do with that much money.
They make a lot of shows now that would never have been greenlit back when all shows had to be hits. It’s possible to have a niche now.
Absolutely.
I maintain that Netflix is basically like The Cannon Group was back in the 1980’s… only, profitable. They just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. You get some real art that way, a few okay wins, some real duds, and some absolute freaks of nature that crawl their way to the top and/or into cult status. But none of it is what typical execs would go for. Which is to say that it’s a viable economic niche in the entertainment industry, especially now that it’s bigger than ever.
Briefly, but it’s possible.
If it’s on Netflix, don’t expect them to finish the show.
cause we need to pirate it.
the one thing i do appreciate is them dropping filler episodes
Community has the best “big round number” episode.
And also the best bottle episode.
Except that one episode of Breaking Bad…
But then again, that show is over a decade old at this point.
Which one was filler?
The one where the whole thing is just Walter chasing a fly around the lab. I’ve even got a vague memory of Vince Gilligan admitting it was only there because they were an episode short of whatever they were contractually obliged to produce but had very little budget left.
no he thought people would like it because of how it develops the relationship… the episode gets referred back to a lot. I thought it was boring though, I’m glad I’m not the only one
S03E10 - “Fly”
omg I was watching behind the scenes and Vince Gilligan was like “i really think that Fly is an episode that’s going to stand out to viewers!” like, why, for being a boring hunk of crap? I think his rationale was that it’s a lot of walt and jesse screen time
A lot of people dislike the “fly hunt” episode.
That’s some rose colored glasses right there.
TNG, Voyager… Rough first seasons leading to excellent series
Also see Life on Mars, Journeyman, Freaks and Geeks, Pushing Daisies, and Freaking Firefly.
None of this is new.
I love Freaking Firefly.
Really Star Trek in general…
Star Gate Universe finally hit its stride in its final season but too late to prevent cancelation
Back when you had TV on a specific schedule, you were forced to watch things as they were. If a show was clunky, well you didn’t have much choice in the matter, it was watch that or change channel or go outside.
With on-demand stuff, you can just completely skip over stuff you might actually like because the first few episodes are clunky. Why should I watch something clunky when I have the choice to watch something I know is good from the start?
…I’m still not watching One Piece though, I don’t care how good it gets later.
Every 100 episodes of one piece has 10 good episodes. Fans of the show will clip those 10 episodes and yell from the rooftops that it’s the best show.
I know the 26 ep a season shooting schedule was hell on actors, but it really allowed for more variety in episodic shows. There could be good eps and stinkers in a season without it impacting the overall show. Plus it gave you more time to weave in on-going plots while also giving room to explore specific characters more thoroughly.
It worked for sitcoms and Law and Order, but generally I prefer the tighter writing that can come with shorter seasons.
I’ll take 10 excellent episodes over 26 fair-to-good episodes any day.
Totally disagree. The amount of episodes per season in the old days is what made so many shows so much worse than they should’ve been
Is there a television show that doesn’t have a gun in it?
Game of Thrones?
The grand tour.
Clarksons farm.
Must see if you like laughing your ass off.
Black Books
You just have to forget that it’s Graham Linehan who wrote that because it never quite hits the same when you realise who it was. It’s the same with IT Crowd and Father Ted.
Didn’t know the name, but knew the shows. What an unfortunate piece of shit he is.
damn. I’m gonna miss IT crowd in that case :/
I had the exact same thought. Abandoning American productions is the best way, although it sometimes means reading subtitles. For example, many of these are free to watch:
Ireland https://www.tg4.ie/en/player/online-boxsets/ South Korea https://www.viki.com/categories/country/korea/genre/all
I don’t recall the last time I saw a gun on TV outside of an advertisement or the news, so I guess your mileage may vary.
Tons of 'em! Comedies, in particular, tend not to have guns. I watch a lot of UK light ent, particularly panel shows, which fit the bill.Then there’s sci-fi (if you’re cool with space guns), and shows set before guns were invented (other weapons may make appearances).
queens gambit
RIP KAOS
ಥ_ಥ
RIP Dennis
There is a weird inverse relationship between how long audiences will wait to give a show a chance, and how long execs (specifically Netflix) will give the show.
I think there must be more to the Netflix example. Maybe they are monitoring other data points like web searches or show mentions on fora to quantify buzz and work out if the show has hit potential with target markets. Either that or they get some new opportunity for creative accounting with each show.
It’s capitalism. Unverified, but I’ve heard it explained as a result of tracking growth through new subscribers. Keeping around an old show won’t drive new subscribers unless it’s a huge show that generates a lot of buzz. New shows have a better chance of appealing to people who aren’t already subscribers. So they cancel the old one and start up another new show instead.
That makes a lot of sense
Twin peaks?
Twin Peaks started out good and stayed good. I didn’t get around to watching it until the late 2000s. I had heard that it started to fall apart after the killer was revealed, but it just kept getting better.
It isn’t for everybody, though, and it probably just got too weird for a mainstream audience.
