The immediate sensation I felt as the first season of Apple TV+’s warped workplace drama Severance ended – with the sort of cliffhanger that has you clawing for the nonexistent “play next” button – was deflation. I would have to wait to find out what had become of Mark, Helly and the show’s other “innies”, who had been desperately plotting a way out of the mysterious Lumon Industries. Soon that was replaced by anticipation: after all I wouldn’t have to wait that long, would I? A year? A year and a half at most, surely?
Two years and four months later and there’s still no sign of season two of Severance. Granted, we have been assured by its director, Ben Stiller, that filming has wrapped, and a few production stills of star Adam Scott clutching a bunch of balloons (above) have been released to confirm that, yes, this show does still exist. But, when you factor in post-production work and the intricacies of scheduling, it’s likely Severance won’t return until the autumn at earliest – close to three years after its first season.
Severance is hardly an outlier here. Back this week is House of the Dragon, just shy of two years on from its first season, and it will be joined in August by season two of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, itself returning pretty much two years to the day after season one. The Boys routinely returns for a new series after a two-year break, as does Industry and The Handmaid’s Tale. Two years has become the new default gap between seasons of big-budget TV drama – though some shows stretch things even further: Squid Game will have been off our screens for three years when it returns in December, as (most likely) will have Stranger Things, when it roars back for its fifth and final outing in 2025.
Some of these long gaps can be chalked down to the disruptive one-two punch of Covid and last year’s writer and actor strikes. But this is a trend that began in the last decade: Stranger Things (pictured below), for example has always followed the two-year gap model since its launch in 2016. A few years later, Game of Thrones paused for just shy of two years between its penultimate and final seasons, and a precedent seemed to be set.
On one level this is understandable. That final season of Game of Thrones was in essence a series of mega-budget blockbuster movies, as was Stranger Things’ most recent run (its final episode was a preposterous two hours and 19 minutes long). It’s obvious that productions of that scale and cost will take time to put together. Equally, though, this “filmification” of TV runs counter to how the medium has operated for its near-century-long history. Television used to be defined by its regularity and reliability – shows returning like clockwork week after week, year after year. But make TV more like film and you have to deal with the restrictions that film brings: A-list stars with limited availability; longer, more demanding shoots; lengthy CGI work post-production. It all adds up.
Of course not all TV is made that way: reality series, gameshows and sitcoms are all able to churn out new series at a rapid lick. And even on the prestige end of the scale, some shows manage to avoid the two-year lag. Next week The Bear returns for its third season in three years, a remarkable feat given the 2023 strikes. Apple’s Slow Horses can go one better – it will air its fourth series in three years at some point in the second half of 2024. There are caveats to consider – most of The Bear’s episodes (with one notable exception) clock in at the 30-minute mark, each season of Slow Horses is six episodes long – but it’s an impressive return rate nevertheless.
The Bear and Slow Horses succeed by sticking to the old model – low overheads, tight shooting deadlines (Slow Horses’ third and fourth season were filmed back to back), an absence of lengthy CGI-heavy post-production work. Both shows tend to be greenlit for new seasons before, during or immediately after their current seasons are airing, which allows production to get going faster. Slow walk that greenlighting process and you’re potentially adding months on to production – remarkably, Squid Game’s second season was only officially greenlit in June 2022, nine months on from its immediate smash hit first season, which perhaps in part explains the long wait for season two.
There are major benefits to making quick-turnaround TV. At a time when there are so many shows to choose between, a series that returns year after year is able to remind viewers of its existence far more easily than one that shuffles back on to our screens after two and a half, even three, years away. The Bear has been the Guardian’s best TV show of the year for the past two years. Slow Horses is – now that Ted Lasso is no more – easily Apple TV+’s buzziest, most talked-about show. Both series feel very much part of the conversation, when it comes to TV in 2024. I hope that there’s a conversation around Severance too … whenever, if ever, it does return.
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