Programs Including The Duffer Brothers' Hit and The Survival Drama Have Become Overstretched. I Strongly Prefer the Single-Season Show

It's an all-too-familiar feeling. Season two of your beloved TV show premieres online, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The debut season ended so perfectly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues shedding light on future developments.

But the new season opener falls flat. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. In episode two, your favorite cast member has done something that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. Halfway through the season, it becomes obvious the creators forgot concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Pitfall of Too Many Seasons

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Consider Kaos, a clever mythological satire starring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. However, supporters might find comfort knowing the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to tell the story in necessary detail. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of relief.

Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in the forthcoming fifth season of Stranger Things.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their struggle with traumatic memories, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. That included the show’s tiring habit of introducing peripheral figures (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's aggravating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

A Common Phenomenon

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Ideal Model

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, residing permanently in our thoughts, unresolved threads included. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. My So-Called Life, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, ran for just one year but achieved film-like breadth: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of adolescent uncertainties remaining perpetual. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to address unfinished business. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, it shows how series resonate profoundly.

The Sacred Bond

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more series can conclude appropriately.

• The author writes about the arts, music and fashion.