The general quality of TV shows is so abysmally low that when a good and/or critically-acclaimed show is cancelled, it’s heartbreaking for those viewers who had invested some time into it.  Worse, certain shows that need to fail will find an audience and continue on indefinitely.   (That last link is particularly mind-boggling — One great CSI (Las Vegas), one good CSI (NY), and somehow the god-awful, torturous waste of time known as CSI:Miami, becomes the most popular show in the world?!).  Regardless, the networks are in the business to make money and they continue to churn out new episodes of popular shows until the quality degrades far enough that the viewership drops below their “not-renew” cutoff line.  The end-result is that good television series are kept on the air long after they should have been cancelled, often ruining the show as they try to eke out the last bit of profit from the series.

That’s why I like when I see the networks try to develop mini-series that are designed to run for a set number of episodes and that’s -it-.  Lost would have been much more interesting if it had been done in this format… then we wouldn’t have had the rambling mess that it became sometime in the 2nd & 3rd seasons.  A similar idea, telenovelas, are extremely popular in Mexico.  Christina and I were able to get into the recently concluded series Harper’s Island, an otherwise modest murder-horror-mystery series, due to the nature of the series — we knew the plot had been developed from start-to-finish with a cohesive storyline and it was the better for it.  (Though the last 30 minutes or so were … disappointing). One of the better fantasy book series out there, A Song of Ice & Fire, is being developed by HBO in this format and I have high expectations.  I hope more networks try this approach.