British Brevity - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Not hard to see why it's England's longest running series, and today, we're showing all seven episodes."

— PBS Guy, The Simpsons

Shows are made differently in Britain, and perhaps the biggest sign of this is length. A full-length season in America is generally considered twenty-four episodes — many seasons run twelve or fewer, but usually this reflects budgetary constraints, a first season which is something of a trial period for the show, or some other special circumstance. British shows, on the other hand, tend to produce only about ten episodes a year if they're dramatic, or about six if they're comedies.

There are a number of reasons for this, the simplest being that British shows usually have a fairly small creative team — it's not uncommon at all for one person to single-handedly write every episode of a show, as Steven Moffat did with Coupling, or David Renwick with Jonathan Creek. This creative consistency, added to the fact that the British can spend a whole year putting together an amount of screentime that an American show produces in less than two months, often results in a show of satisfyingly concentrated quality. On the other hand, there's more pressure to succeed (ruin two episodes and that's a third of a season down the tubes), less of a chance to make a lasting impression, and it makes it hard to develop long-arcing plotlines. This also means that shows tend to have the entire series filmed before broadcast, so shows are rarely cancelled mid-season, or affected by events like the US writers' strike.

This is generally the preserve of big terrestrial channels- often, the downfall of smaller satellite channels tends to be that they need long series simply to justify being an entire channel, and struggle not only to produce that much content (which can be catastrophically expensive), but also to acquire enough syndicated content to fill remaining hours without repeating them too often.

Examples:

The series of The Mighty Boosh were all about 6 or 7 episodes long each.
Perhaps most notable is Fawlty Towers; one of the more famous and well-regarded television series ever made, and there were only ever twelve episodes, from two seasons made four years apart.
Ricky Gervais has a specific limit to his shows: two six-episode seasons, and a Christmas special to wrap everything up. Both The Office and Extras have followed this format.
Mr Bean posed an enigma to its viewers: when does a TV series stop being a TV series and start being a succession of made-for-television comedy specials?
- Similarly, Only Fools And Horses will not be allowed to die.
Red Dwarf lengthened from six episodes a season to eight for the last two seasons. That this coincided with what most viewers see as the shark jump has not gone unnoticed.
- This was followed a decade later by the Back To Earth story arc, which lasted three episodes.
An exception is Doctor Who, whose very first season had 42 half-hour episodes; this was halved from the seventh season on, due to concern about the regular cast's endurance, and subsequently whittled away by budget restrictions, eventually settling at 14 half-hour episodes per season. However, until the new series, each episode was part of a larger serial, and there were generally fewer than ten serials in a season, with the average being around six or seven. The new series has 13 45-minute episodes per season, plus a Christmas special 60-75 minutes in length. These generally run to an hour and an hour and a half in foreign syndication, due to the addition of advertisments (which are not shown on The BBC).
- It's not really an exception, because the six-episode thing usually only applies to sitcoms.
  - However, it is the longest-running Sci-Fi show (and surely among the longest running shows at all) in the world, surpassing even Star Trek- although Star Trek as a franchise has more hours of programming under it's belt (The Other Wiki lists Star Trek's Canon as requiring almost 23 days to watch, Who's canon a "mere" almost 16 days). So it is definitely an exception to the notion that British shows are short-lived.
Life On Mars wound up its plot after two seasons of eight episodes each. Its followon series Ashes To Ashes will have three seasons, or twenty-four episodes total: about the same as one US season.
The Vicar Of Dibley had seasons of four to six episodes each, and then wound down to one or two specials per year.
The Young Ones was a very influential 'Alternative Comedy' series, and retains a cult following. Only twelve episodes (two seasons) were ever made.
The third season of Waterloo Road, with 20 60-minute episodes, must set some kind of 21st-century UK record for a non-Soap Opera, being longer in screen time than most American seasons.
Blackadder is actually 4 different series, each one launched with no expectations of making another. In fact, each series was picked up a year after its predecessor had ended.
Rather ironically, this trope is averted with British sitcom Last Of The Summer Wine which is in fact the longest running sitcom ever made. It started in 1973 and has been running ever since, despite the death of several cast members and by extension at least two main characters, having a grand total of 28 series.
- However in in Summer Wine's 36 years and 28 series, there's only been 289 episodes, fewer than the 441 (as of August 2009) episodes of its nearest competition in the "longest running sitcom ever" race, The Simpsons which has only lasted for 20 years and just as many seasons.
  - To be fair, LOTSW is less of a sitcom and more of a retirement home for British comedians and comedy actors
And Hi-de-Hi! - 58 episodes in 9 seasons over 8 years, and there almost certainly would have been more if the real-life holiday camp used for all the location shooting hadn't been closed, sold off and bulldozed for housing.
And Dad's Army - 80 episodes in 9 seasons over 9 years. And a feature film.
The Bill is also an example of averting this trope - even before it became a Crime Time Soap, this British Police Procedural would regularly clock up 150+ episodes every single year. The secret? Each season is broadcast all year round, with no production gaps. That must be really gruelling work for the writers and the actors. No wonder there's a high cast turnaround...
The Prisoner. (Originally scheduled for 26 episodes but cut back to 17.)
Channel 4 Sitcom Spaced had seven episodes in each of its two series.
Primeval had six episodes in its first season, and seven in the second, giving it a grand episode count of thirteen episodes.
- It got a surprisingly larger 10 episodes in its third season, bringing the count now to 23 episodes (about the same as one US TV season)
Father Ted achieved iconic status in Ireland despite showing just 25 episodes over three seasons.
Jeeves And Wooster was 4 seasons long, each with 6 episodes that clocked in at about 55 minutes each (with the exception of season 1, which only had 5 episodes).
All too common in BBC children’s animations. Mr Benn, Bagpuss, Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley all had just 13 episodes each, which were repeated (to rapt audiences of youngsters) over and over during the 70s and 80s. Likewise, Postman Pat featured just 13 episodes throughout the 80s (huge popularity led to a 10th anniversary special in 1991, further specials in 1992 and 1995, a one-off series of 13 more episodes in 1997 and, finally, regular ongoing series from 2004 on).
Ultraviolet: Six two-part episodes. The creator explicitly stated it was exactly as long as he wanted it to be, so as to avoid screwing up the intelligent plots and premise.
Australia has a similar position on series length. Usually, however, two series a year are made.
- The Librarians had six episodes in its first series.
- Thank God You're Here has 13 episodes a series.
- The Hollowmen has six episodes a series, with three series over one year.
- Chris Lilley's has done two one-season shows so far: Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes, which ran 8 and 6 episodes, respectively.
Allo Allo had 6-10 episodes per series with the notable exception of series 5, which had 26 episodes — more than the previous four series combined. They planned to sell the series for syndication in America. Each episode was only 25 minutes, to account for commercial breaks. Series 6 returned to the regularly scheduled British Brevity.
The Office went on for two seasons (made a year apart from each other) of six episodes each. A two-part Christmas special was made over a year after the show ended. Compare this to the US version of the show, which has run for 100 episodes and is starting its sixth season.
Top Gear tends to vary. Various series range from six episodes to eleven. Like the Australian example above, though, two series are produced a year as well-a summer and a winter one.
Taggart has reached the age of 26 years with only 100 episodes.
Panel Games tend to avert this trope, to a certain extent- while few have series as long as US shows, often run for much longer (and much more variable) series, and like a handful of shows listed above, have two series in a year.
- A Question Of Sport, in particular, managed over 800 shows in its forty-year run, which comes out at an average about 19 episodes a year.
Casualty (1986-present), one of The BBC's, is a definite aversion to this trope; it has aired somewhre in the region of about 700 episodes (50-minutes to 1 hour, primetime Saturday) over the last 23 years, and is increasing. The show's first two seasons were a mere 15 episodes long each; the third was 10. After that, each later season was at least as long as the one that went before it, until the show progressed to practically year-round barring a brief summer break (initially only 2-3 weeks, has since been extended to 6 or 7 weeks) with the current season 24 again being the longest so far at 49 episodes. There have been several calls over the years to simply extend it to a permanent weekly slot throughout the year, thus cementing its transition into a full-blown medical soap opera, but this has yet to happen.
- There have probably been more calls over the year to cut it back to 24 episodes per series maximum.