How many new episodes per season for American TV? and per series for British?

I’m not for certain, Jeruba, but whenever I get seasons of shows on DVD. They usually have around 22–26 episodes per season. This is for American/Canadian shows!

Network TV usually does orders of 26—sometimes less depending on conditions like writer’s strikes. Cable TV will often do orders of 13. Premium TV orders range between 10–13, depending on the show.

British TV does things differently—oftentimes they’ll run a new show for two series (seasons) of 10–12 episodes—sometimes less.

Here in Britain there is no defined length a particular series will run, although with most of the comedy series i’ve watched over the years it’s been half a dozen episodes per series.
Fawlty Towers being a fine example, two series & a dozen episodes ever produced.
A classic case of quality over quantity.

For network tv in America, it’s usually between 20–24. Many new or struggling shows will be picked up for 13 episodes originally, and then if they do well, the network will “pick up the back 9” episodes that was an option to extend the series to a “full” season if it did well, totaling 22 episodes. The full 24 is normally for shows that do really well, and 26 is rare unless it’s a ratings monster or they had to cut last season short for whatever reason. For cable, it’s either roughly 16 split into two halves and aired at opposite times of the year, or 13 aired straight.

From what I can tell for British tv, it’s usually 6 episodes for comedy (“sitcoms”) and 12–13 for dramas. Britain seems to be much bigger on the serial format of tv, so even if it’s more than 4 or 5 episodes, it “feels” like a miniseries (though not all are serial formats, many are more episodic, or will switch between the two formats). I think normally the shows are aired week after week in a straight run, but I know Doctor Who is changing it up and split a 13 episode season into a half in the spring, half in the fall run. Talk shows (like panel games shows) seem to do 9 episodes at a time, week after week, twice a year – but each time, it’s a new series, so many shows have 2 series a year, not one.
I also know that Britain doesn’t seem to renew series the way we do – it’s not like at the end of the run, or a few months later, you’ll know if it’s going to ever return. It’s just sorta like “Well, we’ll see” and it might return next year, it might return in 2 or 3 years, it might take 10 years for the next season/series, but you’ll never actually know if it’s been canceled. That part, I like about American tv – knowing for sure that a show is over, and it’s time to grieve and move on.

There were a few British series that had 22 episodes in specifaclly because they were made to sell to the US. Allo Allo for example came in 22 and13 episode (a US half season) blocks for a couple of years.

So, @ucme, @Aethelflaed—might it be the case that one series of 6 or 8 shows for the year (of an ongoing program such as Spooks) would run for two months in the fall, and a different program entirely would have that time slot in winter, and another one still in the spring? Is that the way it works? I’m trying to figure out what the viewer’s experience is like.

Is this also the reason why BBC seems to turn out so many dramatic miniseries of 4 to 6 episodes, such as those based on novels (Austen, Gaskell, Trollope, Dickens, and so on)? They’re filling certain broadcast slots with a year’s worth of back-to-back miniseries?

What prompted this question is that I’ve been surprised, when following certain British TV shows on DVD, that there were so few episodes in a season (series); for example, The Tudors, MI-5 (Spooks), Hustle, Jonathan Creek. I thought at first that only a few were being picked out for the American audience and wondered how I could get the rest; but the continuity of MI-5 made it plain that there was nothing missing.

Ten months seems like a long time to wait to see what happens next.

@Jeruba Yes, that is absolutely the case (that a different show takes that slot). And it is a horribly long wait.

Why exactly so many miniseries come out, and in that 4–6 number, I don’t know. I’d imagine 4–6 episodes is a good number for many a novel, but I don’t really know.

So there’s really nothing like viewer loyalty to a particular broadcast channel per time period.

@Jeruba Indeed that is the case. It’s not unheard of for a series to change the channel it’s aired on too. Several series have started life on BBC2 only to be “promoted” to BBC1. The criteria usually being based on viewing figures & demand for further series. It was fairly frustrating having to wait for months at a time for another offering of a favourite series, but hey, there’s always good old DVD to fall back on.

I was near the front of the Netflix queue for series 9 of MI-5 when it was released here about two weeks ago, and I’ve just gobbled it up in four evenings, two episodes per night.

I guess viewers in the UK are used to the suspense.

@Jeruba I think there’s also more shows. Instead of having, say, three shows that you really pay attention to in a year, there’s 13 or so, because each one demands less of your time.

Perhaps this also explains the generally high quality of so many British TV shows: making 8 in a year’s time instead of 13 or 22 permits more latitude and greater concentration of resources. The up side and the down side.

@Jeruba Indeed. Well, it’s more the 22 episodes that creates a drain of resources. A lot of American cable shows that do 13 episodes do it because it allows for them to get bigger names and often movie stars to do it. Movie stars aren’t going to give up their movie career to be in a tv show that goes all year around, but they might take a short break every year to star in a series that only airs for 3 months. You also have to make every episode count for the story line in 6–13 episodes; there aren’t many “fillers” or “bottle episodes”.

I think part of how Brits cope with the suspense of not only having to wait a year, but often longer, is that there aren’t the same cliffhangers that we Americans have. It might be suspenseful, you might think “I wonder how Captain Jack Harkness will get on next season after that devastating personal loss”, but there seems to be (and I could be wrong) a general lack of Who Shot JR moments at the end of a series. So it’s not quite as suspenseful as we’re used to over here. Or maybe every time a series ends, the number of death threats the BBC gets from otherwise rational people goes up. Who knows?

I quite like the British shows. It’s a totally different perspective on tv, and the role it plays in life and culture, and a refreshing one at that.

Whoa, @Aethelflaed, you haven’t been watching MI-5. If you want to see cliffhangers, you can hardly top that. One series ended with a bullet in midair zooming toward the main character. Another ended with the two principals imprisoned by ruthless bad guys, and the female principal begging the male to kill her and spare her being tortured. He puts his hand to her throat and she goes limp and collapses just as we see the rescue team approaching the location.

That’s all, folks. Wait till next year.

@Jeruba In the UK it was called Spooks, The first season ended with one of the main characters wife and daughter trapped in a house with a bomb. The last shot was of the house exploding with main character desperately trying to get in.

Yes, thanks, @Lightlyseared, I mentioned both names above. I remember that: chocolate frosting. Did you stay with it beyond the first season? I think it’s a great show and can’t wait for series 10. When the whole thing comes to its real, final conclusion, I hope they wrap it up without loose ends—no last cliffhanger.

@Jeruba sorry my bad! It’s a great show I love the way they weren’t afraid to brutally murder cast members. It’s not like the old Star Trek gag where the main cast don’t come to any harm and the new guy always gets it.