More and more often, I find myself halfway through a TV series thinking: “This should’ve been a movie.”

It used to be the opposite. You’d watch a film and think, “Imagine what the director could’ve done with more time to explore this world.”

I don’t know exactly when this shifted. Maybe it’s just me getting older and more impatient. But I suspect it’s not only that.

Take Severance. It could’ve been exceptional, as a two-hour sci-fi thriller. Instead, since it’s stretched across multiple seasons, I found myself literally falling asleep through every episode of season two. And I genuinely love the core concept.

Or Pluribus. Nine episodes. Eight hours of runtime. That’s the length of more than three 2001: A Space Odyssey films. The pacing feels deliberately, forcefully slow. And when you point this out, people assume you’re complaining about slowness itself, that you need constant action and you can’t handle contemplative storytelling. That’s not it at all. There Will Be Blood is slow. 2001 is slow. Those films earn every minute of their runtime. There’s a difference between purposeful pacing and filling the void with useless stuff.

Then there’s Stranger Things, which just wrapped its fifth and final season. Across all five seasons: 45 hours. That’s nearly an entire week of continuous viewing. That’s eighteen 2001: A Space Odyssey films. That’s almost the complete runtime of The Lord of the Rings extended editions five times over.

Montaigne famously wrote:

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

This perfectly captures what seems to be missing: the discipline of synthesis. The ability (or perhaps the willingness) to trim the fat. Not all of it, obviously. You need some fat to keep the meat juicy.

Good artists know where the line is, they understand that constraints often produce better work than unlimited freedom.

Constraints provide a framework within which creativity can thrive. They push designers to think critically, innovate within limitations, and find unexpected solutions. Without constraints, the design process can become directionless, leading to excessive choices and a lack of focus. […] Constraints should not be seen as obstacles but as catalysts for deeper exploration and refined decision-making. ¹

A film’s runtime forces ruthless prioritisation. Every scene must justify its existence. Every subplot must earn its screen time. This mirrors the Maximum Viable Product philosophy—having just enough features and no more.

Synthesis isn’t just about making things shorter. It’s about distillation: identifying the essence of an idea and presenting it in its most potent form. It’s the difference between a paragraph that says something and a paragraph that says something and three other things that are kind-of-related-but-not-really.

The streaming era has given studios the economic incentive to abandon synthesis. Why make a tight 90-minute film when you can make a series that keeps subscribers hooked for weeks, if not months?

Perhaps I’m the problem. Maybe I’ve lost the ability to appreciate slow-burning, atmospheric storytelling. Perhaps I’m becoming a grumpy old man…

But I don’t think that’s it. I can still lose myself in a slow film, and I can still get absorbed in a dense novel. The difference is that those works feel intentional in their pacing. Every slow moment serves the whole. That’s the goal, not this endless crap.