Do you want to review TV shows? This post is for you.

I’ve written TV show reviews since 2011, but did a hard pivot into them in 2020, when COVID shut down movie theaters. For a time, it seemed like all that was coming out was weekly Disney+ shows and documentaries.

I leaned into the former. Here’s what I learned.

You need stamina for this

You have two options: Review each episode of a show individually as they come out or review the entire season.

The first is only practical if the show has weekly releases (the Disney+ model) and will give you quick but shallow hits. It’s great for short-form vertical video, but might burn you out if write them.

I did both for a time. During the pandemic, they kept InReview alive.

Reviewing an entire season lets you develop a more balanced take, but requires more of your time because you have to watch the whole thing.

Both require stamina.

Usefulness

Episodic reviews let you immediately jump into a trending show, but it’s hard to provide useful analysis because you are almost always looking at one part of a whole.

You can only look at the whole picture when you reach the finale, and even then, you have recency bias.

This makes episodic reviews almost useless for viewers. Well-balanced shows often require some episodes to be weaker than others for key payoffs to land and almost no one is coming to you to see if they should drop a show midway.

Season reviews are more useful for casual streamers; they just need a thumbs up or thumbs down. How enthusiastic you are making either call might sway them.

TV has room for more complex stories

This is the upside: Longform TV has more time to be clever than movies.

This also means they have to try harder to keep you hooked. No one wants to watch a show that needs to fill dead time, unless that’s the point (ie reality shows).

TV has the space for more complex arcs, more sophisticated dead ends and are able to construct subversive and fascinating climaxes that aren’t on the table for film.

TV has some of the best storytelling. It just takes a while to get there.

Burnout

This is the largest danger of reviewing TV. To do it consistently, you have to treat it like a job.

If you blow up on TikTok or get hired by an outlet, maybe you can.

Regardless, you have to really love this because reviewing TV means watching a lot of bad TV with nuggets of gold sprinkled in.

A great exercise for young writers

All things considered, I think it’s a worthwhile exercise.

If you’re a new writer, TV reviews will teach you structure and consistency.

If you’re trying to write TV episodes, you’ll pick up what works, what doesn’t and why.

TV reviews are difficult to sustain. But they can be a bootcamp to get your writing to the next level.