🔗 Share this article

This scenario is painfully common. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and you're brimming with anticipation. Season one ended so perfectly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?). After the season wrapped, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to decode subtle references shedding light on future developments.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. Cut to the second episode, a key performer makes a choice that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. Halfway through the season, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Curse of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Look at Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody with Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The first season boasted an inventive concept, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. In 1996, a plane carrying an all-girl high school football team crashes in the middle of nowhere. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to develop the plot thoroughly. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. This news brought me relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and watching how they deal with their horrific new secrets, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. This involved a wearying pattern of highlighting added personalities (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) who did nothing for the broader story. It’s frustrating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

An Increasing Pattern

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and embraced predictable tropes. Occasionally, series should end on a high note.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Supreme Instance

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, occupying our minds endlessly, cliffhangers and all. My top series ever followed this pattern. My So-Called Life, the quintessential youth program, lasted for only one season but was cinematic in its scope: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. The conclusion provided no neat resolution, but this reflects truth appropriately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to answer some of those questions. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Sacred Bond

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• The author covers entertainment and style.