usually TV has the more interesting story to tell.
Hard disagree. I have always thought that movies have had stronger stories due to the fact that they have a much more focused story to tell. TV shows have a lot more time to fill, which leads them to bringing in random B-plots that often end up as distractions from the main story rather than supporting detail. The investment that a TV show demands is often not worth it in my experience, because 9/10 times the show loses steam before they can tie up the plotlines I care about. For every Breaking Bad, there are a ton of Yellow Jackets, Westworlds, etc. I find it much easier to curate a list of movies than a list of shows.
As budgets have increased to crazy abouts it has felt like tv shows have become stretched out movies that would have been better off as movies. It’s made even worse by how more TV shows despite production values being high have felt like filler and then have a two year long gap on top of it.
Miniseries are ones that haven’t felt that way for me lately.
I found those random b plots often do a lot better at providing character building then the constant ramp up of needing to focus solely on moving the serial plot along.
Then again, I’m also the kind of person who preferred the “monster of the week” episodes of X-files over the “main story” ones. The latter always just seemed so forced, while the former allowed them to relax into the characters.
I actually prefer shows that have smaller stories to tell throughout rather than one large story, so we actually agree here. In these cases if the show loses quality at any point, then I can stop watching without leaving as much plot development unresolved. The downside is now you’re either confining each story to a smaller runtime or you’re chopping up a larger plotline into these smaller runtime units.
I suppose this is how I would put it: TV shows are a superior format for character development through smaller storylines. This is why Breaking Bad works so well. Sure you could say it’s one large story told across multiple seasons, but the way it is told is through smaller stories that can almost stand on their own. The larger story isn’t so much a story but one really long thread of character development of Walter. Movies have a disadvantage with character development due to the lower total runtime, but the singular story ends up more rich. One 2hr movie can often feel more satisfying that several hours of a TV show due to how little the viewer needs to invest both mentally and time-wise. That said, there are exceptions to these generalities I’m making, and I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to either of these mediums.
