When I was a kid, TV made sense.
That’s not to say that television was better back in the day – far from it. What I mean though is that TV shows included ongoing series which may or may not be canceled at a network’s whim, mini-series, and one-off “specials” or TV movies.
Things are so much more slippery now – but overall it’s to the quality of television’s benefit.
Not only are the number of episodes of TV seasons far shorter than they ever have been before on average, but at some point – and I don’t believe I received the memo for this! – the mini-series morphed into what’s now called the limited series.
There’s really no formal difference between the mini-series and the limited series as far as I can tell, but in practice limited series can be transitioned into being simply ongoing television series with multiple seasons based on its ratings and the producers and cast’s willingness to keep churning out fresh content.
Task on HBO is a great example of a high quality, popular limited series that crushed its way out of the limited series form and into a second season. And if it’s not clear, this is a great thing: bring on the Task for as long as Brad Ingelsby and crew want to make it, says I. Much like Slow Horses, Task is built to sustain all different kinds of investigations while also rotating in new characters as needed.
The 1980s, an era lousy with mostly forgettable television series – what, you’re not up for an Alf binge watch with me, you say? – actually featured a surprising number of high quality, big budget mini-series.
The ones I remember best were based on popular novels and were packed with big stars of the era. For example, Lonesome Dove, based on the Larry McMurtry masterpiece, featured Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Diane Lane, and a young Ricky Schroder.
I credit the first round of North and South (based on the first book of the John Jakes trilogy), way back in 1985, as being the kind of spectacle and spellbinding story that helped instill in me a lifelong love for television and serialized storytelling. Patrick Swayze was perfectly cast as Orry Main, as were countless other roles including those played by Kirstie Alley, David Carradine (a bad guy as ever), Robert Guillaume, and even Johnny Cash.
I could say many of the same things about The Winds of War as I did about North and South. In this case, the Herman Wouk novel (which also includes War and Remembrance, both outstanding) was translated into mini-series form with Robert Mitchum as Victor “Pug” Henry and a cast that includes Ali MacGraw, Jan-Michael Vincent, and John Houseman.
Before he would go onto play James Bond in four films, Pierce Brosnan was pitch perfect as Ian Dunross in the mini-series version of James Clavell’s Noble House. I was blown away by the sweep of this financial thriller when I was a kid, and became forever fascinated by Hong Kong and its place in the world.
These days of course there are many outstanding limited series that we’re pretty sure for one reason or another will remain just that and never expand into ongoing television series. I used “pretty sure” specifically, because of course we can never be entirely sure!
The best of these rank highly among Pop Thruster’s best 100 TV shows ever. Band of Brothers, based on the Stephen E. Ambrose non-fiction account of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, during World War II, endures as one of the best things ever produced on television (I rewatch it every 18-24 months to this day).
And Station Eleven, based on the Emily St. John Mandel novel (notice a theme?), is an astonishing artistic statement that still enters my thoughts often.
It occurs to me that what’s very likely the best limited series to have been released in the last year is Netflix’s Adolescence, a disturbing and gripping four-episode depiction of a child, played by Owen Cooper, accused of murder in England. Each episode is shot in a continuous take and is set at a precise time after the murder took place, showcasing the ripple effects of violence across the length of the series.
As I noted, television is better than it’s ever been in many ways – even for now at least in this strange new consolidated streaming landscape we’re in. The fluidity of the form is one of its chief assets – open to new chapters of storytelling for the likes of Task while Adolescence is by design a whip tight defined story.
Or limited series. You know, whatever.