Against the Eight-Episode Season

At some point in the last eight years, without any specific announcement, prestige television converged on eight episodes as the default season length. The pattern is now so established that it is almost invisible. Succession ran at roughly this count. The Bear runs at this count. Severance, The Penguin, The Last of Us, The White Lotus, Mare of Easttown, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, The Sympathizer, Fallout, 3 Body Problem, House of the Dragon, Shōgun (Season 1 specifically). The list is extensive. Eight episodes is now what a prestige-TV season is.

This is, I want to argue, the wrong length for most of the shows using it, and the convergence is quietly damaging the form.

How we got here

The eight-episode season is a compromise, and like most compromises it is not particularly suited to any of the competing interests that produced it.

The interests: writer-producers wanted shorter seasons because shorter seasons are more easily controllable and because limited-series models (six to ten episodes, single-season commitment) gave them the prestige associations of film while still permitting long-form storytelling. Streaming platforms wanted seasons short enough that they could release more shows per year while being long enough that viewers would commit to the show as a project rather than treating it as a film. The market for serious actors wanted seasons short enough that film careers were not disrupted by twelve-month television commitments.

These three interests converged on something like eight episodes. Short enough to shoot in six months and release in a concentrated window. Long enough to feel like a real commitment. A compromise length that made everyone involved roughly satisfied.

The problem is that “everyone roughly satisfied” is not the same as “the right length for this specific show.”

What eight episodes does to different show types

The eight-episode constraint affects different types of shows in different ways, and the effect is consistently bad.

For the cable-era five-act drama (e.g. The Bear, Succession): Eight episodes is slightly too short to develop the kind of serial character drama these shows aspire to, and slightly too long to function as a tightly-constructed limited series. The result is a season that usually contains two “main plot” episodes, three or four “character texture” episodes, and two “setup for next season” episodes. The character texture episodes are frequently the best material the show produces (consider “Fishes” in The Bear Season 2, or “Forma di Cacio” in Season 3), but they feel structurally like interruptions rather than foundation.

For the plot-driven thriller (e.g. Severance, The Last of Us): Eight episodes is too long for the specific plot the show is trying to tell. Shows at this length consistently stretch their mid-season material, which produces specifically-padded middle episodes that do not advance the narrative. Severance Season 2’s middle run is the clearest recent example. The show is good. The middle episodes are padding.

For the character study (e.g. Mare of Easttown): Eight episodes is slightly too few, actually. A character study wants to accumulate, and the accumulation requires time. Mare would have been stronger at ten episodes. The same is true of Big Little Lies Season 2.

For the limited-adaptation (e.g. The Sympathizer, Ripley): Eight episodes is an arbitrary length relative to the source material. The Sympathizer at seven episodes felt slightly truncated; Ripley at eight felt slightly stretched. Both would have been served by adaptation lengths more responsive to the specific source.

The shows that have broken the pattern

A small number of recent shows have broken the eight-episode default and been notably stronger for it.

Slow Horses runs at six episodes per season. The compression is the format’s single most distinctive feature. Each season resolves cleanly, no episode is padding, and the viewer never has the experience of waiting for the plot to restart. The show has now run for five seasons without the quality drift that most prestige TV experiences after three. The six-episode discipline is the reason.

Adolescence (2025), the Jack Thorne Netflix production, runs at four episodes. Four hour-long installments, each shot as a single take. The length is the form. A longer version of the same material would have been a worse show.

Ripley (2024) at eight episodes is the cautionary example: the show is excellent, but it would have been even stronger at six. Zaillian’s specific slow-accretion direction wants to be contained inside a tighter runtime.

The Bear’s Season 2 and Season 3 both contain nine or ten episodes (actually Season 2 is ten, Season 3 is ten). The show has expanded beyond the eight-episode default, and the expansion has served specific character-texture ambitions that eight episodes would not have allowed.

What would fix this

The straightforward answer is: different shows should run at different lengths. A single-plot thriller should run at four or five episodes. A character study should run at eight or nine. A multi-plot ensemble should run at ten or twelve. The length should be specific to the project’s actual structural needs.

This requires that the industry stop treating episode count as a commercial default and start treating it as a creative variable. Currently, the decision-making in the green-light room is often something like “we’re greenlighting an eight-episode order,” and the writers then have to fit their story inside that container. A healthier process would treat the question of length as part of the creative pitch: “this story is six episodes because that is what the story needs.”

Some streamers are better at this than others. Apple TV+ has been the most willing to commission shows at non-standard lengths (six-episode Slow Horses seasons, four-episode The Reluctant Traveller, variable lengths for its dramas). Netflix and HBO have been more rigidly anchored to the eight-episode default. The difference is visible in the quality of their catalogues.

What I want

I want, specifically, for the next generation of prestige TV to be commissioned with the length chosen to match the story rather than the story compressed to match the length. I want the six-episode season to become a viable commercial option again. I want the four-episode prestige miniseries to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as insufficient. I want the ten- or twelve-episode season to be available when a show genuinely needs it.

The eight-episode default is a scheduling compromise that has become a creative constraint. Someone at the commissioning level needs to start asking, in each specific case, whether the show actually wants eight episodes. The answer, for most shows, is no.

Watch what the strong shows of the next three years do with their episode counts. The ones that break the pattern will, I suspect, be the ones that endure.