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“For the most part, no one knows when and if a series will end”

That’s only half of it. A series revolves around the availability of its major stars. What if one of them dies, no longer wants to do the part, or even gets arrested. The producers of “24″ have a serious crisis on its hands. Will Keith Sutherland be around for the next filming—or will he be spending time in jail? The shorter time span of making a movie lessens these risks. It allows the screenwriters and director to focus more on the story line.

I have always enjoyed a novel or movie more than an episodic story. Your “three parts” argument is absolutely valid. When the writer knows from the beginning that he is constructing a complete peice he can include little details that play out through the entire work, joining the story together on many different levels. They can also concentrate on getting on with the story, not working up parts to wedge between McDonald’s commercials.

I also find that I enjoy the (generally) higher production values of a motion picture, and the more tightly and thoughtfully written dialoge of a finished work. Serial productions alway stike me as the Rough Draft version with little time for cinematography or polished dialoge.

Plays can run either way. A particulary good performance is in some ways better than a movie and always better than television. Unfortunately they are rather hard to come by, especially here in Detroit. A bad performance is like spoiled fish… you just want to get away from it as fast as you can.

Two words. Boston Legal. I rest my case.

I was going to say, “I know which is the hardest to write.” But, that would be openly pedantic and subject to everyone’s opinion. I guess it all belongs to the future … 400 years from now, will Shakespeare still be “classic?” Will Hemingway novels still rank an examples of American Literature? Will people still read? For enjoyment? And if they do, and if all these art forms stand side by side, how will any television series stand up?

I’m just getting ready to view Poliwood but I can tell you right now that I agree with you. I’m sure Mr. Chetwynd will have some excellent points but since I feel exactly as you do Re: beginning, middle and end, I love books SOME–mostly old–movies and we got rid of Dish last December. Haven’t missed it once.

Babylon 5 was an exception where there was a beginning, middle, and end. There were events from one season explaining future season events and vice versa. There were also provisions made for changes in cast (expected or unexpected) so that the series depended upon the story arc and not the actors.

I was gonna talk about B5, but Hermie beat me to it.

I still loved that in the 2nd to last episode 2 characters got to refer back to something that had happened between them 6 years prior — in the pilot, no less. 1 continuous “tv novel” if you will.

And the sheer number of “quotable quotes” from the show is amazing also. I still think my favorite is when a security guard says “I don’t watch TV. It’s a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite.” And of course, the lines written by a liberal atheist and we’re watching it on TV. So many layers of irony…..

An endless debate featuring” Hatman vs Trainman” …more exciting than the thrilla in manilla…Yes damn it! But first a good book and a cup of tea, por favor.

Wondered what either of them thought about the Battlestar Galactica remake if they saw any of it… it had a great veneer and great characters, and a great long arch, and some terrific short arches, but was often stretched thin. And sexy robots.

I second hermie on B5!

“Two words. Boston Legal. I rest my case.”

For which side? Not everyone watches your TV show, or even knows what it is.

Anyway, I think the long form is fine if it too has a sense of a beginning middle and end; it’s just a 13-hour movie. The first season of The Sopranos is superbly shaped, and really climaxes not with any of the Mafia stuff but with Carmela and the priest– her flexible morality being the center of the show as much as his more active role. The first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica were fairly self-contained; the first season of 24… hmm, maybe I begin to detect a pattern here? It’s when the shows go on and on with no clear sense of where they’re headed that they lose that novelistic focus.

I would agree that stories with a “beginning, middle and end” are more satisfying than endlessly open series, which tend to have a meandering, purposeless quality after the first season or two. Witness, for example, Six Feet Under.

But movies don’t do this very well these days, either. The critical thing to a story, as Roger the story writer knows, is not so much merely a beginning, middle and end, but a setup, a conflict and a resolution. The best stories present a character and a given situation (beginning,) pose a moral, or at least existential, or character-defining, crisis (middle,) and then resolve it, traditionally either heroically or tragically (end.) That happens rarely today.

I think the reason is that resolution of such dilemmas was always accomplished from the perspective of discovering a deeper truth about oneself and either “dying” to the old self that did not see that truth and transcending the old, limited self through heroic actions in accordance with the discovered truth, or failing to do so and suffering the consequences. Since our culture no longer believes in truths or transcendance, or indeed anything beyond the immediate shallow personal self, this notion is now unintelligible in our culture. So, most movies set up very interesting premises, and often pose very intriguing crises or dilemmas. But there is rarely a true heroic transcendence or resolution, just a muddled petering out of the dynamic tension that makes a story.

Yes, I realize accountants and MBAs and other studio fools superimpose focus group reactions, or other business- or ego-based changes on scripts. But I think the bigger issue is the inability to see what a real story would even be these days.