Twenty-five years later, some of the most admired stories in any medium were TV shows that hardly anyone watched live, that you couldn't follow if you missed an episode, and that had murderers and drug dealers as their heroes. What happened?
The big idea: TV didn't get good because writers suddenly got smarter. It got good because the business changed, and each change made it easier to tell one long, complicated story instead of many short, safe ones.
The shift at a glance:
| Old network TV | The long-form era | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid by | advertisers | subscribers |
| Episodes | in any order | as chapters |
| Built for | reruns | box sets, DVRs, streaming |
| Heroes | likable | antiheroes |
| Seasons | long | often shorter |
Why old TV reset every week
For most of its history, American prime-time drama was episodic: a case, a patient or a problem of the week, solved by the end, with the characters back where they started. That wasn't laziness. Networks shunned serials in prime time because they made reruns harder, and producers avoided them because they were tougher to sell into syndication, where shows earned money for years afterward. A standalone episode can be rerun in any order and picked up by someone who has never seen the show before.
There were exceptions, and they pointed the way. Dallas popularized soap-style serial storylines in prime time; the episode that resolved its "Who shot J.R.?" cliffhanger set a single-episode ratings record that the M*A*S*H finale later beat.
The first cracks: Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks
Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–87), created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, followed a whole precinct at once, with handheld cameras and multiple overlapping storylines, some lasting several episodes. Critics loved it; viewers at first didn't. It ranked 87th of 96 shows in its first season and was, at the time, the lowest-rated show ever renewed. NBC kept it anyway. It then won eight Emmys in its first year and four straight awards for Outstanding Drama Series, and was widely imitated.
Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–91), from David Lynch and Mark Frost, brought a filmmaker's eye and a dreamlike mystery to network TV. The pilot was the highest-rated TV movie of its season. But once the central murder was solved midway through season two, interest dropped; shifting time slots didn't help, and ABC put the show on hiatus. It's a lesson either way: audiences would follow a long mystery, but network economics struggled to wait for one.
Old TV was built to be rerun in any order. New TV was built to be watched in order, and only works that way.
"It's not TV. It's HBO."
The decisive change came from cable channels that didn't depend on advertisers. HBO, a premium service paid for by subscribers, didn't need to keep sponsors happy or win every time slot; it needed people to feel the channel was worth paying for. Its slogan from 1996 to 2009 said it all: "It's Not TV. It's HBO."
That freedom produced The Sopranos (1999–2007), created by David Chase: a New Jersey mob boss in therapy, violent and pitiful and funny, across 86 episodes that built like a novel. It's widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential series ever made, and in 2004 became the first series on a cable network to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Its final scene famously smash-cuts to black, leaving the audience to argue for years.
HBO followed with The Wire (2002–08), David Simon's portrait of Baltimore. Each season examined a different institution: the drug trade, the port, city government, the schools, the newspapers. Simon has described it as a "visual novel," each episode a chapter. It drew only average ratings and won no major awards while it aired; it's now routinely named among the best series of all time.
Basic cable and the antihero
Soon advertiser-supported cable channels, hungry for prestige, copied the model. AMC's Mad Men (2007–15), about a 1960s advertising man who has invented his own identity, became the first basic-cable series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama, and won four years running. AMC's Breaking Bad (2008–13), created by Vince Gilligan, followed a chemistry teacher turned drug manufacturer; Gilligan's stated goal was to turn a Mr. Chips into a Scarface.
These are antiheroes: protagonists you follow and even root for while watching them do terrible things. A long serial is the perfect form for them, because change takes time. You can't turn Mr. Chips into Scarface in 44 minutes.
Box sets, DVRs and the binge
Technology kept tipping the balance toward serials. DVD box sets let people catch up on a whole season, and on-demand streaming went further. Breaking Bad's audience grew as viewers binged it on Netflix; its fifth-season premiere drew more than double the audience of the fourth's, and at the 2013 Emmys Gilligan thanked Netflix for keeping the show on the air.
Then Netflix started making its own. House of Cards arrived on 1 February 2013 with all 13 episodes released at once, ordered for two seasons without a pilot, and became the first online-only series to receive major Emmy nominations. The binge was born as a release strategy.
Peak TV, and after
What followed was a flood. In 2015, FX's chief John Landgraf told critics, "There is simply too much television," and the period came to be called Peak TV. Counts vary by method: NPR reported about 400 original series in 2015, and The Hollywood Reporter counted 633 US series seasons ordered in 2022. Then the money tightened, and by that same count orders fell to 481 in 2023. Some streamers also went back to weekly releases, rediscovering that a show people talk about every week for two months can be worth more than one that's gone in a weekend.
What made it work
| Change | What it allowed |
|---|---|
| Subscribers instead of advertisers | Risky subjects, adult content, slower ratings growth |
| Box sets, DVRs, streaming | Viewers who never miss an episode, so stories can build |
| Creator-led shows (the "showrunner") | One strong vision across years |
| Serialized storytelling | Characters who truly change, including antiheroes |
The takeaway
Old network TV was episodic because shows had to win big audiences for advertisers and work as reruns in any order. Cable subscription channels like HBO, then prestige-hungry basic cable, then streaming, removed those pressures one by one. The result was the long-form serial: The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and their heirs, stories told like novels, a chapter a week or a season at once.
Try this: watch the first episode of an old episodic drama and the first episode of a modern serial back to back. For each, ask: could I skip to episode five and follow it? Does the main character end the episode where they started? You'll see the business model on screen.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources
- Wikipedia's sourced articles on "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" (28 February 1983; 105.97 million viewers; most-watched US series episode), serial (radio and television) (why networks shunned serials; syndication; Dallas), Hill Street Blues (ratings rank 87 of 96; eight first-season Emmys; four Outstanding Drama wins), Twin Peaks, HBO (subscription, no advertising; 1996–2009 slogan), The Sopranos (86 episodes; first cable Outstanding Drama win, 2004; cut to black), The Wire (season institutions; "visual novel"; ratings), Mad Men (first basic-cable winner, 2008–11), Breaking Bad (Netflix effect; Gilligan's Emmy thanks), House of Cards (1 February 2013; binge release; no pilot; first major online Emmy nominations), John Landgraf (2015 "too much television," via Variety), Peak TV (series counts, including The Hollywood Reporter's 633 and 481) and the Golden Age of Television (2000s–present) (return of weekly releases).
Go deeper
- 📘 The Revolution Was Televised — Alan Sepinwall (a critic's history of the dramas that changed TV)
- 📘 TV (The Book) — Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz (two critics argue their way through the greatest American shows)
- 🌐 Related pieces in this library: How to Watch a Film Like a Director · World Cinema: A Starter Map
For Your Vocabulary
Episodic (a show whose episodes are self-contained) · Serialized (a show whose story continues from episode to episode) · Syndication (selling reruns of a show to other stations) · Premium Cable (subscription channels without ads, like HBO) · Antihero (a protagonist who lacks conventional virtues) · Showrunner (the lead writer-producer in charge of a series) · Binge-Watching (watching many episodes in one sitting) · Peak TV (the mid-2010s flood of scripted series)