When did this become the norm in serial TV drama? If my memory isn’t playing tricks, I think the first show I heard it used was ER. But that started in 1994, there must be earlier examples.
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According to this article it first was seen on a TV show called The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp in the 50s https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...-recap/385036/
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I'm not a huge fan of "Previously" because of the way that the editing lets you know what will be important in this episode. But it is infinitely better than the "coming up" that occasionally befouls US TV shows that basically make watching the show redundant and seems to be used as filler because there's not enough actual content.
(Cross post with Benjm)
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostI'm not a huge fan of "Previously" because of the way that the editing lets you know what will be important in this episode. But it is infinitely better than the "coming up" that occasionally befouls US TV shows that basically make watching the show redundant and seems to be used as filler because there's not enough actual content.
(Cross post with Benjm)
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostI'm not a huge fan of "Previously" because of the way that the editing lets you know what will be important in this episode.
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Originally posted by Walt Flanagans Dog View Post
This does seem to have reached a ridiculous level with some (non fiction) programmes where they show you at the start what is "coming up" for the whole episode, then another before the ad break to tell you what is coming up in the next section, then after the ad break they do a recap of the previous section, and so on - as you say it's a way of stretching out the slim content they do have even thinner.
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In Game of Thrones the vast number of characters and storylines meant that "previously" could be a couple of seasons ago. In the last season "previously" even went back to the first (Jaime chucked kid Bran out the window, now they meet again as adults).
I wonder what the longest period covered has been ("previously on Roots" and it's a hundred years ago in Africa, that kind of thing).
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Originally posted by Benjm View PostI always thought that the "This week on..." bit at the start of some US series where they showed a precis of the episode that you were about to watch was peculiar.
Edit: I see WFD beat me to it.
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Originally posted by Walt Flanagans Dog View Post
This does seem to have reached a ridiculous level with some (non fiction) programmes where they show you at the start what is "coming up" for the whole episode, then another before the ad break to tell you what is coming up in the next section, then after the ad break they do a recap of the previous section, and so on - as you say it's a way of stretching out the slim content they do have even thinner.
All of that kind of thing has been reduced or eliminated, including show intros/credits. Remember there used to always be up to a minute of intro and credits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGr...ature=youtu.be
I looked up the Cheers intro. It's about a minute. But writers don't want to give up that much time, especially for a show that's only going to have 22 minutes of actual content. Some shows keep a relatively long intro because, I guess, people just like the intro. Fans liked the Big Bang Theory's intro, which lasts about 23 seconds. I know this because I usually hit the "15 seconds forward" button when I was bingeing it.
Same with Mad Men, which lasted about 40 seconds, but that was for an hour show.
But the very short intro, like Better Call Saul, which lasts about 13 seconds and doesn't have much information, is more common now, I guess. The Scrubs intro with that bit of Lazlo Bane's "Superman" song is 12 seconds. They tried a longer one in the second season, but ditched it because it relied on a remix of the song that people didn't like as much. And when it was shown on syndication, they truncated that to about four seconds, as I recall.
I also recall reading that George Lucas was, essentially, kicked out of the directors guild for refusing to put credits at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. Now it's pretty much standard not to have few or no credits at the start. And if they are, they're computer generated on top of the actual story. No more of those endless "title cards."
https://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/cred...-rise-digital/
Speaking of "Coming up..." DYK that Paul Thomas Anderson's dad was the iconic voice of the ABC preview ads in the 70s and 80s? That voice is burned into my brain. He was so good at switching from previewing something dumb like The Love Boat to switching to "a very special episode" of some shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUs4tNDb9GU
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Originally posted by tee rex View PostMy entirely unreliable recollection is that on programmes like Dr Who (1970s, Tom Baker era) they didn't say "previously" or anything at all, but they did rewind the tape a bit, so you saw the end of last week's episode as the start of the new one.
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Originally posted by tee rex View PostMy entirely unreliable recollection is that on programmes like Dr Who (1970s, Tom Baker era) they didn't say "previously" or anything at all, but they did rewind the tape a bit, so you saw the end of last week's episode as the start of the new one.
You see a slightly different version of the end of the previous episode at the beginning of the next. Sometimes it appears to be done to act as a better precis of where the story is but a lot of the time it merely appears to be a different take.
It makes a lot of sense in a time before video and in week repeats (the previously bit, not the reshooting the end of the previous episode thing).
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I have one of those old 1940s sci-fi serials on DVD. It was originally shown at the beginning of theatre movies in 8 minute segments, week after week. When strung together, with all the "last time on..." previews, I'd swear it's only about 15 minutes worth of content dragged out over an hour. It's sheer agony to watch.
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Did the Adam West Batman actually resolve the cliffhanger from the episode before? As a child I only ever saw occasional ones and never in order. I came to imagine that one of the "bits" of the series was that it always started by resolving a non existent cliffhanger before ending with a cliffhanger which would never be resolved.
That seems unlikely though.
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Originally posted by Cal Alamein View Post
Indeed.
Any excuse to post a pic of one of the greatest tv characters of all time.
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