Serial length allows what a single feature cannot attempt

The argument

Proponents of this position argue from form. A feature has to introduce its world, turn it and resolve it in a single sitting, which means almost everything in it must serve the main line. A serial has many hours, and that changes what is possible rather than merely adding more of it: a character can be established and then contradicted, the consequences of an action can arrive seasons later, a minor figure can be followed until they matter, and a world can be built by accumulation instead of exposition. Proponents argue that these are the devices of the novel, and that length is what makes them available. The second part of the claim concerns where ambitious work is now being done. Writers and directors go where the latitude is, and in the serial form they can develop material at length, revise their plans in response to what is working, and hold a group of collaborators together for years. Proponents argue that when a form offers that, the people who want to attempt difficult things will gravitate toward it, and the work follows the people. The conclusion drawn is a claim about function rather than about screens. Cinema, on this account, was never defined by its projection equipment but by being the place a culture went for serious, large-scale narrative. If that work is now most often made as serial television, then television occupies the position cinema held, and the fact that it is watched at home no more disqualifies it than reading in private disqualified the novel.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that length is a resource rather than an achievement, and that the serial's freedom to continue is also a licence to postpone. A film is disciplined by having to resolve, and much of what is admired in the form comes from compression, whereas serials routinely sustain a premise past the point where it has anything left to do. They add that the argument from where ambitious people work is a claim about the industry rather than about the forms: if the money and the commissions moved again the talent would move with them, which shows that what is being described is a phase of production. On that view television has become a major form without becoming the other one.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Working within a single sitting is a discipline rather than a limitation, and much of what is valued in film comes from the compression the premise treats as a cost. [Rejecting P2] Length also permits delay and repetition, so the devices it makes available include those that weaken a work as well as those that strengthen it. [Rejecting P3] Where ambitious people work follows money and commissioning, both of which can move again, so it describes a phase of the industry rather than a change of form. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that television has become a major narrative form, not that it has become cinema.