9 ms·

The End of the TV Writers’ Room?

jdietrich 8y ago
It sounds like American networks are flirting with the British way of writing TV. The British version of The Office only ran for 14 episodes and was wholly written by two people, versus 201 episodes and 40 credited writers for the American version. The original House of Cards only ran for four episodes. Even long-running series tend to be produced in much smaller quantities, because the norm is six episodes per season rather than 22. You can try out a much wider range of ideas if you just make less of each thing. It isn't as immediately profitable, but some of those ideas will become export hits. Not every programme needs to be mass produced.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The traditional American model has been the 20 episodes per season and as many seasons as you can get renewals for. In a lot of ways, I prefer shorter and fewer seasons for a lot of shows. At least for me a lot of shows outlive their welcome. Although that sentiment probably differs from that of a lot of fans.
  - mynameishere 8y ago
    I mean, what are the ways? If an American show fails, you'll get your beloved 1 season run. If it's popular, it keeps going. What's the problem? The Simpsons and The Office and South Park and Seinfeld all hit their stride at season 3 or so.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      The incentives for writers and commissioners are totally different. In the American studio model, a one-season run is a failure. The process starts with the expectation that successful shows run for dozens or hundreds of episodes. In the British model, you can try out a lot of ideas that just aren't possible in that framework. You can have more meaningful character and plot development, because you're not worried about dragging things out. The American sitcom trope of everything resetting to normal at the end of an episode just isn't necessary. Nobody at the network is going to tell you that you can't write out a major character half way through the first series. You can write tight, self-contained dramas that resolve within the course of a series without any cliffhangers. You can experiment with ideas that have merit, but don't have any obvious potential to sustain a long-running series.
      - paulryanrogers 8y ago
        Syndication may pay a role too. IIRC, the threshold was like 70 episodes. And once it goes into reruns it may air indefinitely.
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        It’s 100 episodes.
    - Adverblessly 8y ago
      The first problem is that these shows follow the Peter Principle. A show will continue to run until it becomes bad enough to be canceled. This means that many shows will have a bad, disappointing ending rather than a thrilling/touching/moving/memorable climax. The second problem is that given that the story may or may not have to continue for another season, how can the main characters get any form of meaningful character growth? How can they get closure or a conclusion when the next season is around the corner and either a new problem has to be invented for them or the existing one has to be reopened/continued? This is similar to the problem that "villain of the week" shows suffer from, just on a seasonal rather than episodic basis. This affects 1-season shows as well since: 1. If they only get one season it may be because they are bad. 2. The 1 season still needs to be written to allow for the possibility of a 2nd season, thus potentially making it less interesting. Of course, for some shows those things don't really matter, since no one watches The Simpsons, The Office, South Park or Seinfeld for the character growth. That isn't to say it is impossible to make a good plot-driven show with this format, just harder (and it is the reason why I rarely watch American TV shows).
      - jon-wood 8y ago
        I increasingly see this in films as well, with fewer films properly wrapping things up so that there’s space left for a sequel or twelve.
  - learc83 8y ago
    The main thing I like about the British style is that they tend to make a season (series in British English) more self contained--they are less likely to end on a cliff hanger in the event the show doesn't come back.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      Mitigating possible failure or betting on success... that's the key difference right there between the UK and the US. :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jon-wood 8y ago
  I find the British model of 6-8 episode series, with a low possibility of renewal, leads to much better TV in my opinion. If you have to produce 20+ episodes of a series then your core story ends up being dragged out in 5 minute doses across all those episodes, and you inevitably end up with slow episodes where nothing much happens. Compare for example Line of Duty with The Shield. Both on the surface dramas about corrupt police officers, but Line of Duty is relentless in its plot development - there’s barely a sentence that doesn’t lead somewhere, whereas The Shield has whole episodes with nothing much of consequence.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Id disagree with the British model having a small number of writers or just one can lead to some very poor scripts getting made - where a collective writers room would have either fixed or killed and bad script. Also concentrating power in that way can lead to bullying eg why Christopher Ecclestone left Dr who or Russel Davis suiciding torch wood.
    - jon-wood 8y ago
      Sure, that’s the trade off, and for me I’d rather take the risk of a few really bad series or writers burning everything to ground. The alternative I see is a sea of highly polished but ultimately bland TV. For every Doctor Who, being slowly driven into the ground by hubris, you’re going to get something like Detectorists, where the writing team had the good sense (and because theirs only really two of them, the power) to decide to end while it was good.
    - renjimen 8y ago
      >> small number of writers or just one can lead to some very poor scripts getting made You're right, but on the flip side it allows for new ideas, which are what the best TV shows have. I'll take a wide distribution of quality over everything clumped around the mean.
      - walshemj 8y ago
        Having a writers room doesn't stop new ideas getting made in the UK inertia and prejudice against "genre" fiction pay a bigger part.
- megablast 8y ago
  So 2 people for 7 hours, or 40 people for 100 hours. Not much difference really, and those 40 weren't working all the time on that one show.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    Nine women can't give birth to a baby in one month. There are inherent compromises involved in the writers' room division of labour. It's extremely difficult for 40 people to share a coherent artistic vision.
sonofblah 8y ago
JokeBot 2000 writez all.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  That AI Winter can't come soon enough.
lsmarigo 8y ago
I'm weary of anything that enhances studios ability to exploit talent - this seems like a great way to get writers by the balls the way they have they've got the VFX industry. The company that did the CGI for Life of Pi (won best visual effects) promptly went out of business and that's typical for VFX firms on major projects because studios hold all the cards. They'll find a new/desperate shop that will agree to an absurd contract with infinite revisions. Writers have a strong guild though so hopefully they make sure this doesn't turn into a race to the bottom from writing talent.
- DaveWalk 8y ago
  The writers have a union which should be able to help with this scenario, yes? Does the VFX industry have a similar thing in Hollywood?
  - lsmarigo 8y ago
    correct, writers have the Writers Guild of America, VFX industry doesn't, they've tried with various initiatives to get one going but none have been successful yet.
  - lylecubed 8y ago
    Technically it's a guild, not a union. It's good for things like providing health coverage and making sure writers get paid and get credit. From what I understand, it has not been great at ensuring sane working conditions.
    - JohnnyConatus 8y ago
      I met up with a pro TV writer I know and he said he was so happy the season was over because he could finally go to a mattress store and buy a new mattress. He said he didn't have time to do it for the last X months. Basically being a TV writer is like working in video games; there's another person right behind you who would love to have your job because of the perceived glamor so terrible conditions persist.
henrikschroder 8y ago
Good riddance. Some of the absolute best television shows I have ever seen have all been planned and executed by a single script writer with a vision and an idea for a single story spanning over X seasons. And the absolute best tv series I have ever seen didn't even bother with standard length episodes, they vary between 15 and 45 minutes depending on the content that needs to go into the episode that week. Turns out that if you get rid of filler B-plots or C-plots, the entire series becomes much better.
- hluska 8y ago
  Would you mind naming the 'absolute best tv series'? I'm not a big fan of television, but that sounds interesting.
  - pilif 8y ago
    Babylon 5 for example. It’s still some of the best Sci-Fi and I regularly rewatch it every few years.
    - Izkata 8y ago
      Dark Matter was a recent one that was definitely up there, except it was canceled at the end of 3 of its planned 5 seasons...
      - hluska 8y ago
        I looked up Dark Matter - it sounds interesting! Thanks for the tip.
        Izkata 8y ago
        Once you reach the end, the creator has a couple blog posts outlining how seasons 4 and 5 would have gone if it wasn't canceled.
    - walshemj 8y ago
peterwwillis 8y ago
Whether you're producing content or buying it, those involved literally don't know how to make shows any better, given the constraints they have (get millions of viewers per show, make lots of money). They've found a way to optimize producing the shows that will make money: squeeze efficiency where you can. And that will continue as long as people contribute to their business model, which is the most money and the most eyeballs. You will never get a reliable stream of quality, unpopular, arty, amazing shows, because they aren't the business model. How do we change this? Fund different business models. Fund a whole new content development platform that distributes funds to productions that won't make much money or get many eyeballs, but will create more diverse content. As those become more popular, do deals with content distributors to help fund it. I don't think there's enough people interested in quality content for this to work without serious budget-pinching, so I don't think it'll happen. You could try to create the platform and just hope the viewers/funders will come. But unless someone disrupts content creation, everyone will continue to be beholden to whomever can pay for content. Another alternative is we stop paying millions to stars of hit shows, or some other production change, but that seems even less likely...
- jon-wood 8y ago
  I don’t know how viable this is for TV vs books, but crowdfunding seems like a good model to get more niche stuff funded, maybe even an episode or two at a time.
clintonb 8y ago
Flashes of design sprint[1] came to mind as I read this. The idea of planning a season, or more, before filming makes sense to me, especially as more shows become serialized. "Westworld" would not have worked if the writers did not have at least the first two seasons planned out. The same goes for "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul", although I'm not sure to what extent Vince Gilligan planned out the five seasons of BB or has planned the five seasons of BCS (a prequel to BB, by the way). [1] http://www.gv.com/sprint/ http://www.gv.com/sprint/
mjburgess 8y ago
> “You’re budgeting and trying to imagine, ‘What are we going to need for the last episode of this season that hasn’t been written yet?’ ” he says. “Eventually, it comes and smacks you in the face.” > Working out the story arc in advance gives a much better sense of what the show requires in terms of sets, locations, cast, and all the other expensive variables that go into creating a fictional world. Its absolutely crazy US TV is developed in this way: make a pilot knowing nothing about any story arcs, and just hope you can budget and bluff your way to a finale? It's blindly obvious it has been done this way. Hopefully this change will improve plots.
btown 8y ago
> Zlotnik compares his team to “venture capitalists in a creative medium, where the businesses are the shows. The [writers’] room is part of a system of staged investment that manages the risk.” It’s interesting that the article makes this analogy, then compares mini-rooms to the gig economy. Are startup accelerators promoting lean methodology not exactly the same concept? The difference between getting into YCombinator and being “accepted” as an Uber driver is that the former has significant upside potential. Is this true of a scriptwriter in a mini-room? Very possibly, from a career progression perspective. But there also may be some exploitation - is your writing credit for Show That Hit It Big worth less in a world where new scripts are churned out by other mini-rooms daily? Makes you wonder what shows would be like if scriptwriters were given equity packages. But that wasn’t ever on the table. With or without this system, it’s tough breaking into screenwriting. This doesn’t change that - it’s just an optimization by the studio itself on how to use its human resources.
CM30 8y ago
It's funny that there are US production teams considering the British way of writing TV episodes given that over here in the UK, there's talk of a few shows like Doctor Who moving to the US model instead: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-considering-us-style-writers-room-under-chris-chibnall/ https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-consid... Would be kind of amusing if over time, the British way of writing episodes became the American one and vice versa.

It sounds like American networks are flirting with the British way of writing TV. The British version of The Office only ran for 14 episodes and was wholly written by two people, versus 201 episodes and 40 credited writers for the American version. The original House of Cards only ran for four episodes. Even long-running series tend to be produced in much smaller quantities, because the norm is six episodes per season rather than 22. You can try out a much wider range of ideas if you just make less of each thing. It isn't as immediately profitable, but some of those ideas will become export hits. Not every programme needs to be mass produced.

ghaff 8y ago
The traditional American model has been the 20 episodes per season and as many seasons as you can get renewals for. In a lot of ways, I prefer shorter and fewer seasons for a lot of shows. At least for me a lot of shows outlive their welcome. Although that sentiment probably differs from that of a lot of fans.
- mynameishere 8y ago
  I mean, what are the ways? If an American show fails, you'll get your beloved 1 season run. If it's popular, it keeps going. What's the problem? The Simpsons and The Office and South Park and Seinfeld all hit their stride at season 3 or so.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    The incentives for writers and commissioners are totally different. In the American studio model, a one-season run is a failure. The process starts with the expectation that successful shows run for dozens or hundreds of episodes. In the British model, you can try out a lot of ideas that just aren't possible in that framework. You can have more meaningful character and plot development, because you're not worried about dragging things out. The American sitcom trope of everything resetting to normal at the end of an episode just isn't necessary. Nobody at the network is going to tell you that you can't write out a major character half way through the first series. You can write tight, self-contained dramas that resolve within the course of a series without any cliffhangers. You can experiment with ideas that have merit, but don't have any obvious potential to sustain a long-running series.
    - paulryanrogers 8y ago
      Syndication may pay a role too. IIRC, the threshold was like 70 episodes. And once it goes into reruns it may air indefinitely.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        It’s 100 episodes.
  - Adverblessly 8y ago
    The first problem is that these shows follow the Peter Principle. A show will continue to run until it becomes bad enough to be canceled. This means that many shows will have a bad, disappointing ending rather than a thrilling/touching/moving/memorable climax. The second problem is that given that the story may or may not have to continue for another season, how can the main characters get any form of meaningful character growth? How can they get closure or a conclusion when the next season is around the corner and either a new problem has to be invented for them or the existing one has to be reopened/continued? This is similar to the problem that "villain of the week" shows suffer from, just on a seasonal rather than episodic basis. This affects 1-season shows as well since: 1. If they only get one season it may be because they are bad. 2. The 1 season still needs to be written to allow for the possibility of a 2nd season, thus potentially making it less interesting. Of course, for some shows those things don't really matter, since no one watches The Simpsons, The Office, South Park or Seinfeld for the character growth. That isn't to say it is impossible to make a good plot-driven show with this format, just harder (and it is the reason why I rarely watch American TV shows).
    - jon-wood 8y ago
      I increasingly see this in films as well, with fewer films properly wrapping things up so that there’s space left for a sequel or twelve.
- learc83 8y ago
  The main thing I like about the British style is that they tend to make a season (series in British English) more self contained--they are less likely to end on a cliff hanger in the event the show doesn't come back.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Mitigating possible failure or betting on success... that's the key difference right there between the UK and the US. :)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jon-wood 8y ago
I find the British model of 6-8 episode series, with a low possibility of renewal, leads to much better TV in my opinion. If you have to produce 20+ episodes of a series then your core story ends up being dragged out in 5 minute doses across all those episodes, and you inevitably end up with slow episodes where nothing much happens. Compare for example Line of Duty with The Shield. Both on the surface dramas about corrupt police officers, but Line of Duty is relentless in its plot development - there’s barely a sentence that doesn’t lead somewhere, whereas The Shield has whole episodes with nothing much of consequence.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Id disagree with the British model having a small number of writers or just one can lead to some very poor scripts getting made - where a collective writers room would have either fixed or killed and bad script. Also concentrating power in that way can lead to bullying eg why Christopher Ecclestone left Dr who or Russel Davis suiciding torch wood.
  - jon-wood 8y ago
    Sure, that’s the trade off, and for me I’d rather take the risk of a few really bad series or writers burning everything to ground. The alternative I see is a sea of highly polished but ultimately bland TV. For every Doctor Who, being slowly driven into the ground by hubris, you’re going to get something like Detectorists, where the writing team had the good sense (and because theirs only really two of them, the power) to decide to end while it was good.
  - renjimen 8y ago
    >> small number of writers or just one can lead to some very poor scripts getting made You're right, but on the flip side it allows for new ideas, which are what the best TV shows have. I'll take a wide distribution of quality over everything clumped around the mean.
    - walshemj 8y ago
      Having a writers room doesn't stop new ideas getting made in the UK inertia and prejudice against "genre" fiction pay a bigger part.
megablast 8y ago
So 2 people for 7 hours, or 40 people for 100 hours. Not much difference really, and those 40 weren't working all the time on that one show.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  Nine women can't give birth to a baby in one month. There are inherent compromises involved in the writers' room division of labour. It's extremely difficult for 40 people to share a coherent artistic vision.

sonofblah 8y ago

JokeBot 2000 writez all.

stephengillie 8y ago
That AI Winter can't come soon enough.

lsmarigo 8y ago

I'm weary of anything that enhances studios ability to exploit talent - this seems like a great way to get writers by the balls the way they have they've got the VFX industry. The company that did the CGI for Life of Pi (won best visual effects) promptly went out of business and that's typical for VFX firms on major projects because studios hold all the cards. They'll find a new/desperate shop that will agree to an absurd contract with infinite revisions. Writers have a strong guild though so hopefully they make sure this doesn't turn into a race to the bottom from writing talent.

DaveWalk 8y ago
The writers have a union which should be able to help with this scenario, yes? Does the VFX industry have a similar thing in Hollywood?
- lsmarigo 8y ago
  correct, writers have the Writers Guild of America, VFX industry doesn't, they've tried with various initiatives to get one going but none have been successful yet.
- lylecubed 8y ago
  Technically it's a guild, not a union. It's good for things like providing health coverage and making sure writers get paid and get credit. From what I understand, it has not been great at ensuring sane working conditions.
  - JohnnyConatus 8y ago
    I met up with a pro TV writer I know and he said he was so happy the season was over because he could finally go to a mattress store and buy a new mattress. He said he didn't have time to do it for the last X months. Basically being a TV writer is like working in video games; there's another person right behind you who would love to have your job because of the perceived glamor so terrible conditions persist.

henrikschroder 8y ago

Good riddance. Some of the absolute best television shows I have ever seen have all been planned and executed by a single script writer with a vision and an idea for a single story spanning over X seasons. And the absolute best tv series I have ever seen didn't even bother with standard length episodes, they vary between 15 and 45 minutes depending on the content that needs to go into the episode that week. Turns out that if you get rid of filler B-plots or C-plots, the entire series becomes much better.

hluska 8y ago
Would you mind naming the 'absolute best tv series'? I'm not a big fan of television, but that sounds interesting.
- pilif 8y ago
  Babylon 5 for example. It’s still some of the best Sci-Fi and I regularly rewatch it every few years.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    Dark Matter was a recent one that was definitely up there, except it was canceled at the end of 3 of its planned 5 seasons...
    - hluska 8y ago
      I looked up Dark Matter - it sounds interesting! Thanks for the tip.
      - Izkata 8y ago
        Once you reach the end, the creator has a couple blog posts outlining how seasons 4 and 5 would have gone if it wasn't canceled.
  - walshemj 8y ago

peterwwillis 8y ago

Whether you're producing content or buying it, those involved literally don't know how to make shows any better, given the constraints they have (get millions of viewers per show, make lots of money). They've found a way to optimize producing the shows that will make money: squeeze efficiency where you can. And that will continue as long as people contribute to their business model, which is the most money and the most eyeballs. You will never get a reliable stream of quality, unpopular, arty, amazing shows, because they aren't the business model. How do we change this? Fund different business models. Fund a whole new content development platform that distributes funds to productions that won't make much money or get many eyeballs, but will create more diverse content. As those become more popular, do deals with content distributors to help fund it. I don't think there's enough people interested in quality content for this to work without serious budget-pinching, so I don't think it'll happen. You could try to create the platform and just hope the viewers/funders will come. But unless someone disrupts content creation, everyone will continue to be beholden to whomever can pay for content. Another alternative is we stop paying millions to stars of hit shows, or some other production change, but that seems even less likely...

jon-wood 8y ago
I don’t know how viable this is for TV vs books, but crowdfunding seems like a good model to get more niche stuff funded, maybe even an episode or two at a time.

clintonb 8y ago

Flashes of design sprint[1] came to mind as I read this. The idea of planning a season, or more, before filming makes sense to me, especially as more shows become serialized. "Westworld" would not have worked if the writers did not have at least the first two seasons planned out. The same goes for "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul", although I'm not sure to what extent Vince Gilligan planned out the five seasons of BB or has planned the five seasons of BCS (a prequel to BB, by the way). [1] http://www.gv.com/sprint/ http://www.gv.com/sprint/

mjburgess 8y ago

> “You’re budgeting and trying to imagine, ‘What are we going to need for the last episode of this season that hasn’t been written yet?’ ” he says. “Eventually, it comes and smacks you in the face.” > Working out the story arc in advance gives a much better sense of what the show requires in terms of sets, locations, cast, and all the other expensive variables that go into creating a fictional world. Its absolutely crazy US TV is developed in this way: make a pilot knowing nothing about any story arcs, and just hope you can budget and bluff your way to a finale? It's blindly obvious it has been done this way. Hopefully this change will improve plots.

btown 8y ago

> Zlotnik compares his team to “venture capitalists in a creative medium, where the businesses are the shows. The [writers’] room is part of a system of staged investment that manages the risk.” It’s interesting that the article makes this analogy, then compares mini-rooms to the gig economy. Are startup accelerators promoting lean methodology not exactly the same concept? The difference between getting into YCombinator and being “accepted” as an Uber driver is that the former has significant upside potential. Is this true of a scriptwriter in a mini-room? Very possibly, from a career progression perspective. But there also may be some exploitation - is your writing credit for Show That Hit It Big worth less in a world where new scripts are churned out by other mini-rooms daily? Makes you wonder what shows would be like if scriptwriters were given equity packages. But that wasn’t ever on the table. With or without this system, it’s tough breaking into screenwriting. This doesn’t change that - it’s just an optimization by the studio itself on how to use its human resources.

CM30 8y ago

It's funny that there are US production teams considering the British way of writing TV episodes given that over here in the UK, there's talk of a few shows like Doctor Who moving to the US model instead: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-considering-us-style-writers-room-under-chris-chibnall/ https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-consid... Would be kind of amusing if over time, the British way of writing episodes became the American one and vice versa.