People over the last year or so have realized the greatness of the 22 episode, fall-to-spring, yearly television schedule. They are sick of the streaming model of 8 episode seasons with years in between. I've written here before about how I think we need a journalism procedural. But there's another genre of television that I think the public needs: the primetime soap.
The primetime soap has been around almost as long as television has. One of the most famous in the early days was Peyton Place. It was based on a 1956 novel that was adapted into a film in 1957 starring Lana Turner. This was also a time that they aired three half hour episodes a week. Peyton Place focuses on a small town, and all the secrets, classism, and all that comes with that. Of course, the heyday of the primetime soap was the 1980s, beginning with Dallas and Dynasty, of course, and all of their spinoffs. It was an era of excess and conspicuous consumption, so of course the general public will want to see dramatized stories of all the powerful people that ruled the country. And the drama was good. Business dealings, family politics, playing the game of society life. Oooh boy it was juicy. The primetime soap continued in the 90s and 2000s, with shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, and Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. We also got the heyday of The WB/The CW in the 2000s, with teen soaps like One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, and a reboot/continuation of 90210. Even when the network pivoted mostly to superhero storytelling, those shows still had soap opera storytelling.
But, thanks to streaming taking over how television is produced, we haven't had a big juicy soap that people get invested in. Except for This Is Us, but that is the exception that proves the rule. As network television started leaning more on procedurals, cable television scaled back or stopped their production slates, streaming is where most television people watched went. Which meant, eight or ten episode seasons, long waits between seasons, shows that get cancelled after one season with no time to even build and find an audience.
We need this again. You see it in the way they talk about shows that are not soaps, with all of the shipping, and the theorizing of what comes next. They want the heightened drama and intrigue and mess. And having the 22 episode season will bring people the drama and the character to get into. With eight episode seasons, the stories are tightly plotted, you don't get much in the way of storytelling through the characters. People used to complain about the "filler" episodes, but now they're realizing that that is what makes television great. The joy of television is that we spend time with these characters, we invite them into our homes. What better way to spend your time than watch people fall in love, break up, deceive, scheme, and push each other into pools?