With less commercially mandated restrictions to the length of most TV episodes thanks to the streaming swell, writers have taken full advantage, going rogue for better or worse. It’s led to seasons that expand and constrict by the episode, less pressure to streamline storylines to the most advertiser-friendly format, allowing for freedom yet also indulgence. How many hourlong Netflix seasons have felt needlessly, painfully bloated yet how many shows have benefited from putting story over Skittles ads?
There were many reasons why the first season of Sam Esmail’s sleek Amazon thriller Homecoming was the finest of that year – an on-form Julia Roberts, stylish and surprising direction, that brilliantly borrowed score – but key to its success was the rare decision, for a drama, to make each episode around 30 minutes long. It was tight and unexpected at a time when so many shows were anything but, yet since then only a handful of other dramas have opted for something similar. In FX and Hulu’s 10-part thriller The Patient, The Americans’ writers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, keep their episodes as short as 21 minutes and, for the finale, as long as 46, a decision that works until it doesn’t, when intrigue starts morphing into frustration.
