Just watched seasons 1 and 2 of Falling Water. Ended on a cliffhanger. Series cancelled. OK, I'm not too worried about this one, although I did relax enough to commit some interest to it.
I have been FURIOUS about some series. Firefly was one. The OA was a peak of RAGE.
Basically, I'm just fed up with the broken promises of "entertainers" telling me we are going to unravel an interesting conundrum, and then saying "Nah! I'm not making enough advertising revenue so fuck my promises and fuck you."
Not denying that far too much (UK) output is dross such as The Crown and Downton Abbey. Also, the UK making sci fi never quite seems to hit the mark. Even when big money is thrown around there's still something amateur-hour about it. We can do great things though, and a lot of European TV is superb. I think Spiral (Engrenages) is one of my favourite cop-shows, and that's before looking at Scandi output etc. The sheer production scale of the US means that there's so much available off-the-shelf that it will always be a major part of the world's TV diet. (Especially now that so many of the distribution vectors, straight into our homes, are US controlled: Amazon, Netflix, Disney. We don't even have to bother taxing them).
What I'm objecting to is that there's no reciprocity in the relationship between those who ultimately control the US-produced "product" and the customers. Yes, I'm sure the directors and actors and scriptwriters and camera-crew and key-grips (whatever they are) try their best and probably many of them feel an obligation to their audience. Left to them they would deliver a finished story that ends where it's supposed to. But the money men appear to care solely about viewing figures and income. Fall below a certain level and it's fuck-off time. I've been suckered into too many series now, where I make a commitment, I care about what happens next, and what happens next turns out to be......nothing.
It's like selling novels with the last 5 chapters missing. Wouldn't work. But if the book is serialised there's an implicit promise that you'll eventually get the lot. Stopping dead is cheating the audience. The audience has been lied to and somehow that's supposed to be OK.
I have tried that, but it can be difficult when series last over years.
The USA isn't the only offender. Canada has some previous here. I remember watching the first season of Odyssey 5 back around 2002. A team of astronauts in high earth orbit witness the destruction of earth. Some alien intelligence thing sends them back five years to see if they can prevent it happening. Nineteen episodes and a cliffhanger is all we got. Then there was the series Intelligence (2006-2008). This was a crime series set in the world of Canadian drug dealing. It had themes of international political corruption and it was rumoured that having commissioned it, CBC got cold feet. They failed to promote it, and when it became successful and popular never even mentioned the raft of awards it was listed for. Finally, they cancelled it, again on a cliffhanger ending, for fear of upsetting the Conservative Harper government, that was already hinting at splitting up CBC and selling it.
Ah, dude - Odyssey - had totally forgotten the name of that, but yes, got stung there!
I find the other thing that happens is that series start out strong and just go beyond pear shaped - Hero's was one. First series was great, then it just went to shit
It's not just that they might get cancelled either, it's the way they all end up being written often without knowing they'll be extended to another series. The result is storylines that lead up to dramatic conclusions and then suddenly they're finding excuses to drag out previously unimportant elements or crowbar in new characters and it goes to shit and then they get cancelled.
Still, it's worth watching some so long as you can not care too much, or it might be that you're talking about Better Call Saul or The Expanse or something and it'd be a shame to miss out on those.
