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5 Ways the Mini-Series Can Save TV

Save TV

By Stephen Lackey February 09, 2010

5 Ways the Mini-Series Can Save TV
© Mania/Bob Trate

How many television series have you watched that started off great but inevitably just ran to long for their own good? What if this series had just been a tight concise miniseries rather than eight seasons long? Some television fans are complaining lately that series seasons are getting shorter and shorter. The fact is that some stories would be true classic if they were just told as mini-series rather than lengthy multi-season series. Here are five ways that telling stories in mini-series form can save TV:

5. Set Lengths Leaves No Room for Redundancy

When LOST started, it was one of the most exciting and innovative shows on television. The show featured a unique style, great acting, and top notch writing. Viewership made LOST one of the most popular shows on television throughout season one. During season two, viewers starting getting antsy waiting for answers but most of the fan base stuck with the series. When season three began, the network wanted the show stretched out so the writers worked to pad the story and those first six episodes of that season nearly destroyed the fan base. The producers negotiated an end date for the show and once they knew exactly how many episodes they had to work with, the pace and excitement returned to the show and the story once again became riveting. The point of all of this is that when a story is being written, if there are a set number of hours given to the writers and producers to tell their story to completion, then they don’t have to constantly come up with ways to stretch the story out to get just one more season out of it.

4. Tighter, Cleaner, More Concise Storytelling

With no time for redundancy or unnecessary padding, all that’s left to do is simply tell the story that the writers mean to tell. The mini-series can be as little as four hours including commercials and if that’s enough time to tell the story, then so be it. With the mini-series in mind, the story becomes the focus of the production. The writers tell the story as clean and tight as they possibly can due to an actual time limitation. Looking at LOSTagain, the show, as fascinating as it is, has become a bit convoluted. Imagine if the LOST story had to be stripped down to its basic parts and told in a six- or eight-hour mini-series. Even in this brief length of time, a main story arc can be defined and several subplots established but they must be developed with a focus on the story at hand and how it will tie with the other stories in the miniseries. With the fat trimmed, all that’s left is the real story, so writers have nothing to hide behind or buy them time to figure out how the story will end. Everything must be written and defined before production ever begins. This allows for a level of focus on the story during the production not necessarily in place on a show that is expected to run multiple seasons.

3. Characters Have an End Goal

Often on long running shows, especially shows with a fairly large ensemble cast, some characters get little or nothing to do. In a mini-series though, there’s just not time to include non-essential characters so the ones that actually make it into the production get to have real influence of the story. Whether it’s a coming of age story where a character is supposed to go through a life-affirming event or a character is on a downward spiral into evil, that character will get a beginning middle and end and in a well-written mini-series he or she will have impact on the outcome of the main story. There are many secondary characters in LOST that just disappear into the background for most of the show’s run and get a line or two here and there but no real direction or goal.

2. Variety

The story is told in four to eight hours and it’s over, leaving space for a new story to begin. Imagine a science fiction mini-series in the fall followed by a fantasy miniseries in the spring and a thriller in the summer, all in the same time slot on the same network. One of the biggest problems plaguing current television is the lack of variety. Networks are clogged with procedurals such as the multiple CSI’s and LOST wannabe’s and very few of these shows are breaking ground in entertainment or leaving a mark in television history. Some of these shows are garnering adequate viewers but just adequate and not exceptional. The mini-series provides television fans with new stories to get excited for multiple times a year and it they also allow networks to experiment with new ideas and types of stories.

1. Quality Over Quantity

Everything adds up to this; quality over quantity. Tighter storytelling, better characterization, innovative plots, and wider variety all add up better quality programming. With that said, the limited number of hours to tell a story means less quantity which is something that’s scary for networks. Networks love it when they have a quality program that they can keep going year after year. It’s a security blanket for them. What inevitably happens though is the quality of said program eventually suffers and when it finally ends, it isn’t remembered as fondly as it could have been. It should be completely acceptable to end on top. After a successful mini-series is done, let the producers do another one!

Some stories are better told in mini-series form and some fit the longer form of multiple seasons. The task of determining the proper way to tell a story falls on producers and on the networks. The challenge is for the networks to accept that a story could be better as a mini-series and that it’s ok for a successful story to end after just a few hours. Seasons are getting shorter and shorter with 13 installments per season becoming more and more common. It’s not a far step to take to start and finish a show in just those 13 episodes and then even begin to tell stories in even shorter form. One such show was Day Break. No one watched the show when it was on as filler between Heroes chapters but it was actually an exhilarating thrill ride that ended at the perfect time. In the ‘80s, there was a new Stephen King mini-series every year along with Shogun and let’s not forget V. Some of those mini-series, most notably The Stand and V, have influenced movies and television shows years after their original broadcasts. So the idea that mini-series can save TV isn’t so farfetched after all.

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COMMENTS AND RESPONSES

Tashiro 2/9/2010 12:59:40 AM

Just don't expect Fox to do it. I don't think the higher ups have two brain cells to rub together.

dragon261 2/9/2010 5:09:47 AM

CBS is setting themselves up for a fall with it's over-reliance on proceduals. Three CSI's, Two NCIS's, Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, Cold Case, another Criminal Minds show is in the works and rebooting/remaking H:5-O. CBS should just change thier call letters to MDK for Murder-Death-Kill.

jppintar326 2/9/2010 5:19:54 AM

Prison Break is a good example of a series that dragged on too long and when the end came, nobody cared. It would have worked better as a miniseries. Lost is another great example. Too many characters and too many flashbacks and flashforwards literally "lost" the audience in confusion, including me. I ended up quitting the show and never came back after year 3. The other show that comes to mind is 24. I always thought the real time gimmick got old quickly. Even on the best season, there are going to be two or three episodes that are just filler. The second season, in which a nuclear bomb exploded early in the season, was a good example. After a nuclear bomb explodes, how can you top that? The answer is you can't and the rest of the season ended up being dull.

LeonardoR 2/9/2010 5:52:19 AM

Smallville is a great example of this. How many seasons more can they go before Clark puts the glasses on and nobody recognizes him?

Stratosserbia 2/9/2010 5:52:51 AM

The mini-series are Great: Just look on Prisoner, Lost Room, Band of Brothers. So at this point

Mini-Series CAN save the television

dnbritt 2/9/2010 5:57:32 AM

My only question is, why is a picture of hippy Luke Skywalker leading this story?

lusiphur 2/9/2010 6:04:41 AM

@dnbritt - That's not Luke Skywalker. That's Richard Chamberlain from the mini-series Shogun.

okonomiyaki4000 2/9/2010 6:08:26 AM

Mini-series can be great for all the reasons listed here but they can suck just as bad or worse (ok, not worse) than regular series too. Here in Japan, practically every series is a mini, like 12 episodes or so and that's it. And guess what, they're all pretty much boring crap. There are plenty of great examples of how to do a series properly, Babylon 5 (for the most part), Lost, BSG, first season of Heroes, just about any HBO series, etc. You'd think it would be obvious by now but we keep seeing shows with great potential just blow it like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Flash Forward, V, and every season of Heroes since the first one. I think it would be great to get a good mix of minis, full series, and even a few decent made for tv movies (no really! they could be good! Anything is possible!) but format alone doesn't really solve anything. You know what will get more good stuff on TV? Quit watching the crap. It only took them 7 months to figure out that the Jay Leno show wasn't working, why is Heroes still on?

littlemikey979 2/9/2010 6:19:19 AM

I agree with Leo here. Smallville is a great example over this. They could have put Clark in the Superman tights long ago and maybe Lex would still be on the show in his own purple and green battle suit. Maybe the serise would have been over already but most will argue that is already is. I think limiting a series to a number of seasons would make tv better. Just look at Supernatural. I was set for a certain number of season and it flowed smooth and was not just a bunch of filler shows

Jensen Ackles for Captain America!!!

monkeyfoot 2/9/2010 6:36:11 AM

Mini-series are and should be an excellent addition to viewers. I think reliance on long running series have come down from when the three networks were dominant. That style still prevails but I think the rise of cable helps change that format. I also think once more web produced programming starts to be more easily brought from the computer monitor to the living room TV the mini-series format will become much more prominent. And even if a particular mini becomes very popular, it can always be brought back with another limited run mini-series that has a definite end.

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