Mini or Series?

My wife and I have discussed this a few times recently. It seems like a lot of TV shows and ideas suffer from being continuing series. We lament the loss of the '80s style mini-series.

Take Heroes, for example. Tim Kring had an awesome and inspired idea for a show. He crafted it and honed it over years and finally was able to sell it to a network with the huge super-heroes tide. And season one was just that: awesome. It had a great villain, it had a great cast, and the storyline had a strong beginning, middle, and end. It was like seeing a favorite comic book literally come alive week to week.

But the problem was, it had a season two. And now a chapter three and four (season three). None of these new chapters/seasons has come close to living up to the first, because Tim Kring didn't have years to write a good plot, story, work out the problems, and then shop it.

If the networks weren't so greedy and stupid, they would have done season one as a maxi-series and then told Tim that they wanted first crack at the next one, should he develop it. And Tim should have then gone off and worked on it as he did the first and get it right.

Lost is another example. How many "crappy" seasons have fans had to go through after the first season? You read blogs and boards dedicated to the show and, while there have been bright spots and resurgences, the show has never been as good as in the first season.

It could be argued that 24 suffers the same way. Season one was so good (well, minus the incredibly crappy female characters who were written to be dumber than doors), and nearly every season has suffered in comparison. Some have edged up the ratings and kept it going, while others have been lamented by its fans as racist, biased, claptrap.

Desperate Housewives could be included. The first season was campy and funny and did well. But then subsequent seasons have struggled and gone in different directions and been much less successful. They had to resort to rebooting the entire seasons "5 years later" (or however long it is) and basically go back and do the same stories from season one again in order to gain back viewers and regain their ratings.

Another example that shows this effect clearly is the recent attempt at reviving Knight Rider. The two-hour premiere movie that aired wasn't too bad; it had most of the elements from the TV show we liked, the new car was interesting, and it did well in the ratings. But, when they turned it into a regular series, they ignored the original show's working premise, they ignored what worked in the premiere, and they went off in a different direction. And it tanked hard and fast. They tried to fix it by going back to that original premise, but by then it was too late-- they had killed their promising new show. Bionic Woman did nearly the same thing.

One reason that the cable networks have been so successful at drawing audiences away from the networks is because of a) when the shows run and b) how long they run. Most cable shows have 7-11 shows in a season, go on hiatus for longer periods of time (often only running over the summer, so they have the longest hiatus in which to write really good episodes). They take the time, generally, to write a complete storyline for the season and have the time to edit it and knock it around and get it right. Another thing they do is try not to compete too directly with other cable networks; in that way, they don't loose audience to those that like both shows and won't switch if the two shows are on concurrently.

Now, imagine if the shows above had been conceived as mini-series or maxi-series. Imagine if the networks had just shown the one season as a special event and then allowed the creators to work on it for a year before coming back with a new special event. Imagine if, instead of having 22 weeks interrupted regularly by sporting events and things like the awards shows, we got 52 weeks of new programming? Imagine having new material of your favorite shows less often, but with higher quality, and with other shows to try and hopefully like while that first show is off? Imagine if the networks got wise to the fact that the 60s-80s way of doing things no longer applied and actually tried hard to give the audiences what they wanted, rather than shooting themselves in the foot on a seasonal and, these days, weekly, basis.

I can dream, can't I?