After two seasons, the queer pirate romcom starring Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby was cancelled by HBO’s Max earlier this month – and its fans quickly mobilised. They raised more than US$21,000 for the campaign, which was used to purchase a billboard in Times Square and have a plane fly over Hollywood with a banner reading “Save Our Flag Means Death”. They also flooded Max’s social media, phone lines and customer feedback inboxes en masse, and launched a petition that has just under 80,000 signatures at time of writing.
Fucking hell, how can people not realise that less is more?
Look at all the classic sitcoms. Did they get strung out for 20 series? No, they stopped
Look at the reviews on IMDb for British shows, almost every one is “Oh my gaaad the Briddish make the best shows, but I wish they were laaaanger”
They’re better because they’re shorter, you daft cunt
Quality over quantity. However, I think 2 seasons is too short. I’m in the 4-5 seasons camp, especially if there are less than 10 eps each season.
I think two seasons is plenty if they only have two seasons’ worth of story to tell. I think trying to aim for arbitrary episode/season counts harms storytelling in general.
The show’s creator had planned a 3 season arc.
Well then three seasons would have been appropriate!
I was just speaking in a broad sense; it’d be great - especially with streaming not needing to fit things into any kind of schedule - if we could have more shows that just take the amount of time they need to tell their story, and then finish.
Three seasons is plenty for most shows. It seems like most fall off right around season 4
In typical Internet behaviour, I tried to think of a rebuttal however immediately thought of what happened with Red Dwarf…
Black Adder had the right formula: different time periods in each series.
I can’t even watch the renewed Red Dwarf. Should’ve ended way before Series 8.
Yeah, I loved the show and was gutted to see it end. And then I remembered that season two ended with a happily ever after (to the historically possible extent) and I can re-watch it in a couple of years.
Yeah, I agree for the most part, but I am always scared of shows ending up like My Name is Earl
Not just because they’re shorter.
The production schedule on scripted US shows is often absolutely insane. Ridiculously long hours, multiple episodes per week, sometimes even writing the scripts and plot as the show airs on network television, which is why you’ll have breaks or bottle episodes, to allow the writers to catch up.
From what I understand, a lot of the good UK tv shows, they have far more time to make it. Not the lower tier stuff (soaps, etc.) obviously, but that stuff doesn’t really get much of an audience outside of the UK.
On the other hand most of my favorite shows of all time had 22-24 episode seasons.
I totally agree that less is more but OFMD had some unresolved plots and stories. I’m pretty sure it was planned from the get-go for 3 seasons so losing the last one is a big deal.