No...Lost goes to show it's a waste of time watching new network television shows. I'd say Good Girls has a pretty strong run, and more than one platform to exhibit it. And while I'm not always a fan of the system that churns out consistently dumber and lower-hanging fruit year-after-year, we are also in the middle of a wealth of television choices, and by nature, some will be better served by other platforms than a string of privately-owned stations all qualifying for FCC licenses. But, this is our baseline from which we compare all the other systems of producing long-form TV productions in this country, and it has its' advantages and drawbacks.
"Given that the cancelation came as a surprise, and the final season ended on something of a cliffhanger, the producers are in negotiations with both PBS and commercial platforms for a movie that would wrap up loose ends."
So has it ever been. How many classic TV shows from the past have been cancelled "too soon" and/or without closure? Things like The Fugitive are the exception, not the rule. The thing that bugs me is the move to 8-13 episode "seasons". So all these shows that are three-and-done on the streaming services amount to about 1.5 seasons on a classic network schedule--not a whole lot.
So many things led up to "seasons" that are more like story arcs than the typical 22-episode seasons we are used to in this country. The first culprit is the "mid-season finale" scam that is just publicity to stroke an unfinished season that's really just taking a few weeks break because they're too cheap to keep producing. The next thing is the "prestige series" fad of a few year before Netflix took off as a show production platform, where every netlet and minor basic cable channel had their one expensive series to get our attention. This competition also led to the basic cable channels staggering the season premieres to not get in the way of the broadcast "Fall Season Premieres". And then there's the pandemic, hacking production schedules to pieces, and some shows struggling to get back onto the air for 6 or 7 shows they need to complete a season, before they even start shooting the next one with their masks off. Which also led to a focus on the public trying to follow the "Upfront presentations" all media companies use to interest major advertisers about their new and returning shows (this is where your mid-May list of cancellations comes from when it makes the rounds of all the light news sources, by the way) And now, look where we are. There's as much anticipation for returning shows that left us with cliff-hangers, and no Fall Premiere Week for most of them. "Fall Premiere Week" has also been hacked to pieces, and spread all around the calendar. Netflixes and Hulus and other platforms that won't even tell you when their next seasons are starting...because they don't need to; you can catch up whenever, and they don't need the "event" publicity of a Season Premiere, because by the time it airs...they already know how many eyeballs the show is gonna get, and you've already paid for it anyway. It's not the same old television song-and-dance.
Any aardvark that hangs around for 25 years deserves a more noble death...say, crossing a lonely desert road, and not paying attention to the RV barreling-down on him...
A big big problem with the current landscape is that shows evaporate for 12 months, then reappear with new episodes. A year is a LONG time, and often people can't even recall why they kind of liked or wanted to watch a show. Or, in some cases, even what was going on--terrible for a serialized drama. In the Big 3/4 network model, you aired your last new episode in May and reconvened in September (+/0) and there was a better chance people remembered something about the show. There also weren't near as many video pipes, so that you might well have watched some fill-in repeats of that show in the interim. Case-in-point for me: the TV series 12 Monkees. I enjoyed the first three seasons. Then it took more than a year to come back for the fourth and closing season. I tried to watch the first episode of that fourth season, and I could not remember what the heck was happening. I gave up. Yes, there were 1 year gaps between all the seasons. But there was so much mythology set up going into season 4 and I just couldn't remember much of it--and didn't have the bandwidth to go back and rewatch the earlier stuff to remind myself. My loss? Probably. But it's an issue for the new model.
But don't forget, we Americans did it differently, and had it differently, for soooo long. I much prefer the British method, where a show lasts as long as the story does: "Series", vs. "Seasons". They beat us, I believe, to the notion that a sequential narrative is a much better time for the audience, than episodes that don't really connect, you could watch in any random order, and the characters and the plot doesn't really progress. Not adhering to a schedule designed to please the advertiser contract, they're not limited to how long their series' last, or even how long the episodes last. Just write the damn thing, shoot it, and let it make its' own case. But, even once American broadcast networks got into that groove...they often couldn't do anything more than put the right "beats" into the drama, get us to some "cliffhanger" at a season break or break for next season, and just churn the story into same-thing-different-season mentality. Prison Break on FOX, I think, is one of the most egregious examples. Spent a whole season breaking out of a prison, the sponsors throw more money at the network, and so they re-jigger the entire finale in the final ten minutes, so that, "Ohmigosh...you mean, now we have to break back into prison?!". Lather, rinse, regurgitate. Don't get me started on Lost.
Not to mention, on Prison Break, that the evil/corrupt guys became the good guys because...it helped create more plot. But, yeah, the end of the first season had that "Every time I think I'm out they pull me back in " feel to it
I don't know why they keep trying with these reboots. Very few are good at all. Many are also being cancelled. It seems that TV is seeing how good movies are doing with reboots and decided it would be profitable but that isn't the case at all.
Isn’t that always how it works out? Even in a cartoon show. It was unique when Dallas did the “who shot JR?” bit. Now it’s routine. Cliffhangers should be outlawed.
I have always maintained that "Seinfeld" might have stayed on the air for years longer if NBC gave them an open ended contract after that final season. "Whenever you get inspiration Jerry we at NBC will show new episodes" would have been a smart business decision. It's basically how Larry David has worked for 20 years at HBO. Sometimes he takes a year off sometimes he takes five years off but people are ready to watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm" whenever he is ready to present new episodes. The British model works for him and allows for better television in the end.
One show that SHOULD be cancelled that I am absolutely frustrated with is Simon Kinberg's "Invasion" which is all long build up and no information on what's truly going on. Yeah, we know it's an invasion from elsewhere but a little more information on what's going on would be useful. i love long story arcs but I'm reluctant to invest if it is just going to be another shaggy dog story.
One advantage of British television was often the showrunner would want to tell a complete story over their series it also was more cost effective.
Now we'll never find out if he can pi** up a rope as well, I guess. I was hoping that could be a good Season Three story arc.