Since always there has been a debate between television series and movies and which offers better content. While there are plenty of reasons to choose either of them, we’ve seen some of the brilliant pieces of art from both of the medium. Be it a series or a film. There was a big difference earlier between movies and shows as the movies has the luxury of getting showcased as the big silver screens, while TV shows were made available digitally. But this changed in 2020 and boy it was a major change!
In 2020, due to shut theatres the movies slated for theatrical release came onto the streaming platforms as direct releases, meaning that many anticipated movies with big names arrived at the comfort of our homes. But there were only few which were celebrated by the audience. On the other hand, this year truly belonged to the web series’ as there were plenty of content to binge and several of them were loved by the audience as well. So what worked in favour of Web shows and despite being on the same platform, why did they garnered more eyeballs?
Well, there is a simple understanding on this topic. Web series generally comprise of 5-10 episodes which give them ample time to build an engaging story. The writers have the freedom to actually explore the characters and run different storylines simultaneously which also gives the audience a little bit of free time to delve their mind apart from a particular storyline. Plus due to more time on hands, writers have the liberty to develop characters which generally helps the audience to connect with the character better. And this eventually leads into a viewer getting attached to the characters.
In the movies, duration is considered a major factor because you have to sit through an entire 120 minutes (average) plus there are lesser opportunities for character development due to minimal time on hands and hence several movies faced the wrath of this. If the starting 20-25 minutes isn’t engaging people drop the movie which isn’t the case with web series because they are meant to be slow.
What worked in the favor of these shows was their episodic approach which gave the audience a breather between several high voltage moments plus every episode ending with a cliffhanger only excites the viewer for future episodes. This feeling is absent in the movie which particularly follow a monotonous path.
And hence, web series like Scam 1992, Bandish Bandits, Asur, Paatal Lok, did an exceptional job of entertaining the audience whereas movies like Laxmmi, Sadak 2, and others failed to do that due to their lethargic approach.