Image via Complex Original
What television does well: tells a story over a long period of time, so that you get to know a group of characters on a level that a 90-minute movie doesn't allow for. Long serial narratives also allow for characters to change in ways that wouldn't be believable in a shorter amount of time. Thing is, not all stories require this kind of marathon pacing. There are shows that should've been movies (and vice versa).
With Hollywood experiencing a kind of financial/existential crisis, and television becoming a more creative space to work thanks to premium networks and Netflix, we may see even more projects that would've been better as movies stretched out unnaturally for multiple seasons. To prepare for this, let's look at 10 TV Shows That Would've Been Better Off as Movies.
My Generation (ABC)
My Generation borrowed the popular mockumentary format to follow a group of high school seniors as they graduated, and then revisit them ten years later. Each person fit a different stereotype: the Nerd, the Jock, the Punk, etc., but they had one cliche in common: They all realize that their lives aren't going as expected.
The show was cancelled after two episodes. How the hell My Generation wasn't pitched as a movie could be anyone's guess. (Or maybe it was, and the studios passed.) It sounds like a lost John Hughes scripts. Making audiences relive their high school years (and the crushing sadness of their lives afterward) for two hours is plenty. Making an entire series out of it? That qualifies as torture.
Do No Harm (NBC)
Do No Harm is yet another short-lived series that never stood a chance. The show centered on Dr. Jason Cole (Steven Pasquale), a successful neurosurgeon who gets overtaken by his evil alternate personality each night. He successfully controls this other side through pharmaceuticals until one night his body becomes immune. Cole's other half realizes what Cole is doing and tries to ruin his life.
Sound familiar? It's Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There's a reason the compact tale has received many film treatments. Without writers willing to push the tale beyond Mr. Hyde meets Scrubs, there was no place for this to go other than the ash heap of TV history.
Awake (NBC)
Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) can't tell the difference between what's real and what's fake, and this forms the central problem in Awake. A detective for the Los Angeles Police Department leads two lives after an accident kills one of his two loved ones. In one reality he lives with his son, and in the other he lives with his wife. This is high-concept, Philip K. Dick territory. And the most successful Philip K. Dick adaptations have come from Hollywood.
Hostages (ABC)
An adaptation of an Israeli television series, Hostages brings us the wonderful Toni Colette as a doctor who is ordered to kill the POTUS, who she is performing surgery on, in exchange for the lives of her kidnapped family. Like Prison Break, the show will likely run cold once the hostage situation resolves itself, but the show will probably be cancelled by then anyway. A film makes much more sense given the narrow scope of the story.
Prison Break (FOX)
FOX had its doubts about Prison Break but the show silenced those concerns with its immediate popularity. The series begins with Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) trying to get into prison to break his brother out. Sure, seems reasonable. The subsequent seasons follow their lives on the run. From the title alone you're left wondering, "What next?" As the show meandered, it become increasingly clear that a a movie or at the very least a miniseries would've let the writers tell a succinct story.
Harper's Island (CBS)
Harper's Island was a murder mystery, set at the titular location seven years after a murderer enjoyed a killing spree there. Unlucky for friends and extended family, the stupidest couple in the world have elected to be wed on this island. And then the killing begins again. Already working in the lane of classics like And Then There Were None and Scream, Harper's Island would've been in good company had it been a movie. Sustaining horror-grade tension over an entire season is difficult to do, as made clear by this misguided attempt. Everyone loves a murder mystery. But the real mystery here is why this was ever a series.
Under the Dome (CBS)
Under the Dome is a current sci-fi show about Chester's Mill, a small town in Maine that gets inexplicably cut off from the world when an indestructible see-through dome drops down from the sky. You know, like the one that covered Springfield in The Simpsons Movie except there's no sinkhole escape route. As resources diminish, dome residents struggle and tensions rise as they try to figure out why the dome's there and what they can do about it. It's important to point out that the series is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, which is to say a property with a clearly delineated narrative arc. There's an ending already in place. Which is why so many of his novels have been turned into either movies or miniseries. Until network TV switches up its model and puts storytelling above ratings that can be milked for years and years, this won't be the place for an indefinitely running adaptation of a novel. If only Netflix had grabbed this.
The Killing (AMC)
The Killing's producers wanted their gritty, bleak Seattle-set drama to be television's longform answer to a David Fincher movie—think Se7en and Zodiac. As the show's early marketing campaign made clear, the premise was simple: "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" And there you have it, The Killing was pitched as a murder mystery. But there was a problem: Series creator Veena Sud didn't want to give her viewers any answers in season one. Why not prolong the big reveal and end the first season with little to nothing resolved?
Because, Ms. Sud, people watch and/or read murder mysteries to eventually find out who did the killing. Making them wait an entire year to then have to sit through 12 more hours of frustrating build-up is, well, criminal. Not to mention, idiotic, ill-advised, and indicative of unearned self-grandeur. Unnecessarily stretched thin over two seasons, The Killing's Rosie Larsen case was a textbook example of a compelling enough storyline with a feature-length shelf life. Someone should have told Veena Sud.
Dexter (Showtime)
It might be too soon to re-open the wound that is Dexter, but we'll do it anyway. Dexter followed a Miami Metro Police Department's blood splatter pattern analyst (try saying that five times fast) who was secretly a serial killer. Not just any killer, mind you, but a killer of criminals he thought got off easy.
An interesting concept, sure, but one that should have lasted for eight seasons (equaling 96 episodes)? Especially when you consider that his sister, Debra, was supposedly the police department's best detective, yet it took her over 70 hours' worth of television to figure out her brother's "dark passenger."
By Dexter's fourth season, its characters not named Dexter Morgan all became laughably unfit for their law-enforcement jobs, and, even worse, one-note. Unable to sustain the show's initial strengths, Dexter's producers probably could have killed it, pun intended, in a 105-minute feature. One that'd end satisfyingly, unlike Dexter's abysmal eighth, and final, season. One word: lumberjack.
Dharma & Greg (ABC)
We never said it'd be a good movie. Dharma and Greg, about seemingly mismatched newlyweds with aggressively zany families, would've brought in truckloads of cash for some studio. Dharma (Jenna Elfman) is the manic pixie dream girl from hippie parents. Greg (Thomas Gibson) is the uptight lawyer from parents who had their assholes surgically removed in the mid-'80s, when they were bowing before the Great Reagan. Guess how well these people mix! It could've been like Meet the Parents, get it in for 90 minutes and then get out. Caricatures milking one situation of incompatibility for 119 episodes—what kind of world is this?
