One of the major problems with TV that I’ve noticed is that you can have a great premise and great starting season, then the show gets cancelled for some stupid reason. I often find movies to have higher quality than TV. What do you think?
Love a great movie, but the hardest itch is best scratched with a mini series. By that I mean a series that is a finished story in one season. Sometimes they add another season, but it’s almost never as good as the stand alone first season.
It’s the perfect medium I think. Long enough to tell a full story and not leave too many details out (like in movies) but also to the point and finite, not like a series where you’re already watching season 8 because you feel like you have to, just to see the ending of a story that might never come.
Examples are: Band of brothers, Chernobyl
TL;DR: Mini series is the best of both worlds IMHO.
I second this. Mini series that are like 8 to 12 hour long episodes are perfect. Long enough to tell a full story and hit all the beats but short enough that you don’t have to sit through a bunch of bullshit filler that adds nothing to the story.
Mini-series are so rare. It’s either Movie or TV for most video content
What I hate most about a lot of series is that they come up with a good beginning and a decent middle, but no end. And so if it gets popular enough they just try to coast on the decent midddle indefinitely until loyal viewers get bored and the writing becomes monotonous, millking the life out of it. So many good shows devolve into this that it’s hard for me to want to invest my time into any new series.
I think mini-series is the better format where they have a defined beginning, middle, end from the start. This is essentially thd packaged format of a movie, just longer.
I’m a movie guy, but it doesn’t really come down to quality for me. I’ve watched many shows that match or exceed the quality of even the very best movies. I just prefer the package of a movie; being able to sit down and get the complete experience in one afternoon as opposed to the days/weeks/months or even years long commitment of watching a show. Don’t get me wrong, I love TV, I just prefer the ease and comfort that a movie can give me.
We used to watch movies but now usually choose series. I don’t know why i can watch 3 one-hour episodes, but a two-hour movie feels like too much commitment.
I prefer TV series as a medium; I have trouble sitting through a whole movie, and I think the way series have ‘chapters’ like a book is really helpful for a lot of stories. There’s also just a lot more detail you can put in a long show.
All that being said, I’m so sick of series that don’t go anywhere, or get cancelled prematurely. Other than miniseries like Queen’s Gambit it seems like so many just sort of wander off into mediocrity after some seasons. Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Outer Range (soon)… Now I wait for series to end before picking them up, at least in the case of plot-heavy shows like those. There’s less of an issue for comedies and other types of shows where the story isn’t the main draw, so that’s the sort of TV I end up watching the most.
I prefer TV series as a medium; I have trouble sitting through a whole movie
Heh, that’s funny. My wife and I usually watch TV twice a week, 3 episodes one day midweek, and about 6-10 on a Friday :D
If it’s actually telling a story, I prefer a series. However, most shows have no end in mind. They don’t exist to tell a full-fledged story, but rather to keep you watching. Those that do tell a story, though (with a true conclusion to the story)? Those are great.
Otherwise, give me a movie over a never-ending show.
I find the opposite. Good TV series tend to have much, much higher quality story telling than even good movies, mostly because a movie is the length of a short story.
Care to share? I’m a bit bored.
My favorite example is still The Wire (or even before that Twin Peaks).
A more recent example is Dark.
The Wire is really not what I’d enjoy watching. I got to the point where the cop and the gang had some confrontation and the cop was intructed by his superior to lie and claim that he “feared for his life”. At that point I just fucking can’t continue watching. Too real for my liking. I want to watch tv for escapism, not to be reminded how shitty real life is.
Too real for my liking. I want to watch tv for escapism, not to be reminded how shitty real life is.
I get that, I had to stop watching Handmaid’s Tale for similar reasons. Not directly because it was too real, but because it made me too angry, I was shivering from anger.
For recommendations, it would be good if you could give a hint of genres you enjoy. Dark is certainly a great show, but also very dense and can easily be confusing (I’d always recommend watching it with the help of the official site which has an episode selector so it never shows information you haven’t seen yet. I almost skipped it because in my mind German shows = bad, it took Netflix marketing, raving fans, and my wife to give it a chance ;)
For a very different show, I could recommend Night Sky. A very slow, scifi-ish show that uses the backdrop to explore the relationship of an elderly couple. It’s a wrapped-up single-season show.
More lighthearted with a bad-ish first season (of seven): Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It was the one reason I watched the horrible marvel movies because they played between seasons and were relevant to the story.
For shows that are in the general “Wire” region of quality, but without the darkness: The Americans or The Sopranos. One is about undercover russian spies living in the US, one about an Italian mafia family in the US. Both have grittiness, but also humor, and are loved by critics and audience alike.
The Americans was boring af. Stopped watching early on.
I already finished Dark, I loved it, although the “You can’t change fate” type of theme is a bit annoying. I watched 12 Monkeys (the TV show, not movie) which is anothet time-travel series and the atmosphere was not as dark (pun intended), and much more “chill” to watch.
The genres I like are: Science-Fiction, Alt-History, Political (but not too “real”)
I liked watching:
The Magicians The Expanse The Good Place For All Mankind Man in the High Castle (it was dark, but alt-history isn't really realistic so it wasn't that horrifying to watch) Travelers 12 Monkeys (TV, not the movie) Game of Thrones (minus season 8, that doesn't exist for me) Breaking Bad Designated Survivor Kingdom (the Netflix Original that's in Korean) FringeSome movies I liked were:
Terminator 2 Interstellar The Martian 1917 Dunkirk Back to the Future 1-3 Star Wars 1-6 12 Angry Men PrimerHeh, quite some overlap. I watched and liked all shows you mentioned, besides Kingdom (I rarely watch non-English shows) and The Good Place (I don’t like comedy). For movies, I loved Interstellar, and I liked Primer :) 12 Monkeys is good, but had a lot of writing issues with movie-sized plot holes.
The Americans certainly requires being invested in the characters, it’s very focused on them and their development.
Based on that list, my main recommendation would be Continuum (Cyberpunk-ish time travel show playing in the now). For more space-based scifi: Dark Matter (canceled too early, so unfinished; band of misfits brought together by chance, amnesia) and Killjoys (bounty hunter team, interstellar conspiracy; moves from pretty small-scoped to huge; finished)
Some recent series I have enjoyed are Star Trek Strange New Worlds, Foundation, Wednesday and The Mandalorian.
Some older ones I would recommend are Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek DS9, Community, The Good Place,
Out of all of those I would say Babylon 5 has the best long term story and character development in a way that just isn’t possible in something that is as short as a movie (especially the characters Londo and G’Kar).
In theory I can enjoy either one pretty much equally.
In practice I feel like I tend to enjoy movies more these days, since for the most part they’re actually made with an ending in mind. A lot of TV series tend to either get cancelled inconclusively or just keep stretching on aimlessly forever as long as the studio thinks it’ll make money.
I enjoy both, but I prefer a good series over a good movie. The much longer form of a series enables more complex stories and greater levels of nuance.
TV series come with more risks and more bad default behaviors than movies. They can always be cancelled in mid-story. Some are forced to tell a story-of-the-week at the expense of the overall story. And there are always producers who want to stretch a series as far as it will go, long after the material has been exhausted.
Despite the potential risks, a series with a coherent long-form story to tell can do things a movie just cannot do. It is possible to tell a story across multiple movies, but doing that amplifies all the risks of a series. If the second movie of your five-part story isn’t a hit there will never be another. Movies almost always have to tell a self-contained story, even if they are part of something larger. And if the last planned movie does get made, and is successful, there WILL be more sequels to cash in on the property.
It’s worth noting that movies can never replicate a typical novel because the difference in volume of material is far too great. A movie roughly corresponds to a novella. There are plenty of brilliant novellas and plenty of brilliant movies, but at the end of the day I prefer a novel or a series of novels.
TV series all the way. The shorter the episodes, the longer i can keep watching. I have a hard time justifying spending an hour to watch one episode of a show but i can sit still for 6+ hours watching 10 minute cartoon episodes.
I really only watch movies at the threather and only when i already know I’ll like the movie
I don’t like 99% of movies at all. To me, they are TV shows compressed to 1.5 hours and skipping most development and plot on the way. I’m generally big into character development, something movies don’t really offer.
TV shows, I love. We watch a lot of British crime dramas, which tend to be too slow for some people only used to US TV. I like it when a story can breathe, and there’s a lot of time for characters to grow. And it’s even better, if this happens over years. So while I do enjoy mini series, I’m then sad that they are over. Just like I generally prefer 10 book doorstopper series when reading, I want the story to continue. Of course, at some point it has to end (well, unless you count my guilty pleasure Supernatural which they could have just continued forever, it had lower standards for writing anyway :D), but 3-4 seasons is a good spot for that.
And outside of Netflix, S1 cancelation is not actually that common for good shows.
It does help, that just like with games, I value writing far over effects and general graphic fidelity.
Anime.
Lol there’s only 4 animes I watched: Death Note, Steins;Gate, Mirai Nikki (Future Diary), and Zankyou no Terror (Terror in Resonance). I find most animes boring. In fact, the ones I watched is solely because of the plot, I don’t like the media style of animations, I prefer live-action content (although I understand it’s difficult to find actors and special effects that can portray the story as well as the anime, and there’s budget concerns. Shinigamis would look ridiculous in live-action).
As for cartoons, there’s only 2 that ever watched: Futurama and Rick and Morty (although sometimes I find R&M a bit too “edgy”)
Yeah I understand.
You say you find them boring, but you say you have only watched 4 you should better phrase it to I find them uninteresting, because I don’t think we could qualify something as boring if we don’t know about them (a quick sinopsis doesn’t counts).
I have watched some cartoons as well, but mostly from my childhood, I know almost nothing about “new cartoons”.
And yeah I also like a lot TV shows, some sitcoms are easy to binge watch and I like the quality production of Game of Thrones and the plot (until certain seasons), also Breaking Bad is my favorite one, I know these are very mainstream, but what can I say I would need to balance my time more to watch more stuff 😅
I love both, and used to consider myself a major film buff. Now I have a young daughter and the only time I can watch what I want is usually when she’s asleep. So now it’s mostly tv shows, but I do still try to go see movies or watch movies at home from time to time. The kid is also getting old enough to start watching movies (sort of anyways) so I do enjoy showing her movies that were a big part of my own childhood.
