After watching Daredevil, I couldn't shake the feeling there was something unusual about the series. I thought the casting was fabulous, stylistically it was beautiful, but it was.... different.
Then I realized it was the unusual narrative structure that had caught my attention. Daredevil felt more like a miniseries, despite the thirteen-episode order. Episodic television on a traditional network relies more on standalone elements. Sure, there are storylines that traverse an entire season, but a lot of other mini narrative arcs are happening within the framework.
In Daredevil, these elements were kept to a minimum. Not because the material is sourced from a comic book (as some might argue) but I'm presuming here, because this is a stylistic storytelling choice: the program is written specifically for the Netflix format. Audiences were never expected/required to wait a week between episodes.
In audience's minds, a week is quite a long time for fresh fodder and it's possible this is how intricate, multilayered television became synonymous with success: a need for closure (in regards to subplots) ensured audiences continued to tune in. Now there is no need to wait, and the story flows on from the point the last episode left off.
Another recent Netflix offering, Being Kimmy Schmidt, left me with a similar impression. The show didn't feel exactly like a traditional sitcom. Requisite elements were there, but structurally there was a shift. And once again, the storytelling experience was immediate and ongoing, the first season merging into (potentially) one complete viewing experience.
While it can be argued there are other earlier examples of this practice as an emerging storytelling trend for TV-style shows, I think Netflix's hit offerings are true indicators that demand demarcation of the practice as commercially successful/viable: conscious, confident stylistic choices deliberately adopted and presented by an ever-growing platform. Sure, they're trying a lot of different programs out for size this year, but at present the type of storytelling structure I've referenced seems a recurring thread through their latest successes.
Prior to this the most notable TV-related trend was the rise in popularity of HBO programming. HBO shows were imbued with filmic traits perceived by audiences as measures of "quality". In a sense, their shows chewed up and spat out the idea scripted television was a lesser medium than cinema by imbuing "small" screen offerings with "big" screen elements. Jumpstarting a tired format forced the medium to experience an evolutionary jump. But rather than moving toward the expected web-style brevity, their shows were longer and in most cases more complex than scripted television of the time. People were brought up on the idea you paid for cinema because it was better, and HBO cleverly utilized this ingrained belief.
There's no denying changes in technology and available mediums have resulted in experiments in format, and online series have become a medium all their own. The idea of the web series, for example, is in a constant state of flux and experimentation. Definitely a medium of the future, but at this point it can be argued one that hasn't yet evolved in a practical business sense to hold as large a share of the market (monetarily) as it presumably will. (At present more traditional television networks often produce webisodes as adjuncts to their television programs, like an advanced form of a promotional tool for an existing series, rather than as standalone products.)
One of the most interesting web series (in the sense it stuck in my mind) was H+. Possibly because before this I had always equated a web series with a low budget. Theoretically the short episodes should have appealed, but the glossy quality and the extremely short episodic structure seemed to confuse people more than anything else. Interesting to note viewers had network-specific expectations of the project: rather than flocking to a program that offered traditionally more filmic elements in a web series medium, the general public seemed stumped by the entertainment experiment. "It felt like HBO, but it kept stopping and starting." (Perhaps because in a storytelling sense the narrative felt divided between episodes, an approach not quite in sync with storytelling trends at that point?)
At present, the style of scripted television Netflix is tweaking is clearly the next stage in an ever-changing viewing process. DVDs and the downloading of a series's entire back catalogue gave audiences a taste for a total experience of a TV program, but still, fans had to wait for each single episode to screen through the traditional medium first. Now even that stepping stone is bypassed.
Which begs the question; will scripted network television follow the one-season-one-unit trend? With NBC offering all 13 episodes of Duchovny's new program Aquarius after the screening of the pilot, signs are starting to point to yes. Transitioning to the offer of a series experience as a single unit boasting immediate availability is a nod to changing expectations and viewing habits, if not preferences.
Instant gratification has become a huge part of the online experience (across a number of entertainment forms). Scripted entertainment is slowly moving toward both recognition of this and the subsequent development, and adoption, of marketing approaches that will address these expectations. (On a side note, the term of the moment is "binge-watching" but to be honest I think the idea is already dating. Binge implies gorging to excess, but only within the framework of one hour viewing as the accepted norm, an idea that's slowly but surely on its way out.)
The evolution of small screen storytelling—whether that's a TV screen, laptop or smartphone—is extremely interesting to monitor (ha) in today's world.
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