Sorry to keep mentioning Power Rangers,but SPD had 38 episodes and they were all high quality.
Ummmm... that show is 30% of those kids being idiots at the juice bar and 70% of toys on strings being bashed together.
They don't have a juice bar and all the zords are CGI now.SPD is a police series.It's in the future.The red and yellow rangers were theives at the start.Lets see you argue with that.
Many ITC seris actually ran for 26 episodes a season.
Then when ITV moved away from ITC the most episodes in a season was 13 (MInder).
During the 90's, though there were a few exceptions.....
Soldier, Soldier; Peak Practice and Heartbeat ran to about 26 epsiodes each...
Although BBC stook to the more traditional of maximum of 13 episodes for some series (e.g. Bergerac, Blake's 7 etc).
If anything in the UK the norm max run for a series is 13 epsides which, to be fair and honest, is a decent run for any series - it's better than 6/7 episodes which doesn't give anything to the chanracters etc, whilst its less than the 22/24/26 they have in the states which can be a tad too much.
Soldier, Soldier; Peak Practice and Heartbeat ran to about 26 epsiodes each...
I remember with Peak Practice they used to split the series at one point into 2 x 13 episodes series. 26 episodes shown during the year but in 2 blocks.
A rather stupid argument. I can think of many US series that wipe the floor with shorter British series in terms of quality.
Even ratings bankers like Spooks for BBC1 are never raised above 10 episodes, when a nice length would be just a little more - around 12-14 episodes.
I still maintain I would like to see some longer series of maybe 20 episodes for dramas, and for networks not to cancel them too soon - give them a chance and we could be seeing British classics in the making like the US has seen with Greys Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and the like.
If networks are so cautious, do 'Pilot' series of 6 episodes. If successful, raise to around 14. If very successful, push the boat out and produce a fantastic 20-episode run.
The key difference here between US and UK programmes seems to have been missed - in the UK a new series of 6, 12, or however many episodes will (usually) be scheduled as a self contained block of new episodes, one per week until they're over and then that programme is gone and will be replaced with something else.
In the US, key dramas and sitcoms of the ER and Friends ilk don't run in discrete 'series', they run virtually all year round with a 9 month long 'season' from September to May in which 22/24/26 new episodes are produced to be aired gradually during that time. During the season repeats from the current run are interspersed into it and once the season is over the remaining 3 months are filled out with random repeats from any season. This is why US TV presentation always flag up new episodes in such a prominent way.
This is also why in the UK a US series will usually start in January - several months after the US run but yet will usually finish in June only a few weeks after the final episode has had it's US airing.
US production rate has actually declined over the years. In the 1960's, it was common for big network programmes to run to 30 episodes, and although today you still get some programmes at 24/26 episodes, it is becoming more common to see 22 episode runs when in the 80's this was virtually unheard of (it took a writers' strike to reduce season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation to 22 episodes when every other season had 26). Of particular note is the fact that the final season of Friends only had 17 episodes (although admittedly several of them ran to 45 rather than 30 minutes and the syndication version now doing the rounds has split the final one into two parts making 18 episodes) yet it still ran in the same 9 month season.
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I still maintain I would like to see some longer series of maybe 20 episodes for dramas, and for networks not to cancel them too soon - give them a chance and we could be seeing British classics in the making like the US has seen with Greys Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and the like.
This is always going to be a problem though - the bean counters in charge believe that they are delivering the most profit for the least outlay, but often make fatally flawed mistakes with boardroom reshuffles having more impact on what's transmitted than they should. It's nothing new though - the 70's epic that was Upstairs Downstairs was produced under an LWT management that backed it, and was then subsequently axed before transmission by a new management that felt it too quaint and too BBC like to work on ITV. Eventually 6 episodes (out of 13) were reluctantly scheduled in a graveyard slot more as a personal favour to the producer than on the merits of the programme itself. But what happened next? It exploded in popularity, ran to five seasons shown in prime time (with the end only coming because the production team felt it had it's day - LWT were begging for a 6th season), spawned a spin off series, has been repeated in the UK almost continuously ever since it's original transmission (indeed, the first repeat run started in January 1976 only 3 weeks after the final episode had aired) and has gone on to become one of the only succesful US exports that British TV has ever made.
What has changed now though is that relunctant airings late at night don't happen because late at night is now filled with quiz TV, and personal favours between producers and schedulers don't happen because the bean counters don't allow it any more, and the result is that there are probably countless series produced with the potential to be classics - but have never been transmitted because of the personal tastes of a handful of accountants (who surely are not best qualified to critically review TV anyway). This IMO is as much a contributing factor to the downfall of British TV as is the explosion of commercial channels to an advertising market which can't support them.
Worth noting though the US are now with big shows such as Lost and 24 looking at running series uninterupted.
The comparison still stands though - per year alot of UK shows only have one 6-8 part series, while in the US they have a 22-episode run.
I do think around 13 episodes would be right for UK shows, with 8 as the standard for a first series to test the water.
If they wanted to run for longer the series should be split in two distinctly seperate series - perhaps as a block of 8 in the Autumn then 13 in the Spring or something.
