Subject To Change

Anthology series, a staple of TV’s storied past, are making a comeback.

And for viewers, these series — offering different stories, characters and, sometimes, casts in each episode or season — are as fulfilling as standard, multi-season series. And less stressful, since they do not necessarily require a long-term commitment.

FX was the first to ride the new anthology wave with Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, now wrapping its sixth season. The network followed with Fargo, which returns next year for its third season, and American Crime Story, which will follow its very successful first season — The People v. O.J. Simpson — with a story about Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, on ABC, John Ridley’s American Crime has been renewed for a third season; at HBO, a third season of True Detective is pending.

Matt Roush, senior critic at TV Guide Magazine, recalls his reaction to Murder House, the first go-round of American Horror Story, which aired in 2011. “When we watched the first season — as the characters kept dying off — we thought, ‘What the hell are they going to do for season two?’”

The show didn’t reveal its anthology roots until the end of the season. Since then, Roush says, subsequent seasons “create a certain amount of excitement and anticipation toward the fact that the show can reinvent itself every time it comes back.”

The season-long anthology clearly has its fans. AMC will launch its own next year: The Terror, starring Jared Harris as the captain of the a British ship searching for the Northwest Passage while being stalked by a mysterious predator.

And Dick Wolf is tweaking his Law & Order format for NBC, with Law & Order:True Crime ; the first season will focus on Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989.

But several anthologies expected in 2017 are following the old Twilight Zone model. Those wiping the slate clean every week, rather than every season, include:

• Bobcat Goldthwait, who has partnered with TruTV for Bobcat Goldthwait’s Messed Up Stories ;
• Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl), who created The Guest Book for TBS;
• Dez Dolly, whose Dimension 404 will premiere on Hulu;
• M. Night Shyamalan, who is curating a return of Tales of the Crypt for TNT;
• and Gale Anne Hurd, who is bringing Aaron Mahnke’s popular podcast, Lore, to Amazon.

Matt Weiner, creator of Mad Men, is also making an anthology series for Amazon, but at press time, details — including the title and format — of the eight-episode project were yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, the heralded British anthology, Black Mirror, returned for a third season in October, with 10 episodes on Netflix.

“I’m really grateful for Black Mirror,” says Goldthwait, who tried pitching an anthology show in previous years with no luck. “Even though tonally my show won’t be like that, that was an example of showing people that an anthology series could work.”

For Marissa Ronca, executive vice-president and head of programming for TruTV, Black Mirror’s popularity shows “there is a space for people who are interested in seeing this kind of storytelling, which doesn’t involve a multi-week commitment to get the payoff.”

Cautious programming won’t cut it anymore, she adds. “The greatest thing you can do as a network is try to develop things that feel wholly original, fresh and new.”

Except they aren’t exactly novel. Anthologies were a staple of television from the very beginning. Small budgets and abundant New York theater talent gave rise to the weekly filmed plays, written by such rising talents as Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky, and presented by Studio One, Playhouse 90,  Goodyear Theatre, Philco Television Playhouse and the like.

When television production moved to Hollywood, and live programming was replaced by filmed shows, “programmers began to realize that if you could get people to watch and like a show with a regular set of characters, it was those characters that kept you coming back every week,” says Robert J. Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

“Anthologies couldn’t provide that sense of branded predictability.”

In the 1970s the form evolved into the miniseries, reminding viewers that a compelling story didn’t have to go on forever. But as primetime became more serialized, the miniseries faded as well, with a few exceptions. (Then again, Aaron Spelling’s hits Fantasy Island and The Love Boat were really anthologies, with regular supporting casts to provide familiarity.)

“A couple of things made a rethinking of the anthology series possible,” Thompson explains. Rather than seasons requiring 24 episodes, the past decade has seen seasons comprised of only 13 episodes. “All of a sudden, series took on some of the same characteristics of miniseries.”

That’s appealing to storytellers like Goldthwait, who’s been making movies for years. His Stories will be dark, twisted, funny genre mash-ups. “It’s comedy of the awkward — usually disgusting things are going on. But at the end of the day, there’s some sort of weird kindness that percolates. If I’m successful with it, it will be a hybrid of Twilight Zone and Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The Guest Book is a more straightforward comedy that arose out of an obsession. Several years back, Garcia rented a vacation home in Big Bear, California, as a writing retreat, but he had trouble working there. He saw the guest book, and wrote a crazy story in it “to freak out the owners and the next renters.”

He started doing the same in every rental he visited. “It got to the point where I would go away just to write in someone’s guest book.” His show will feature different stories revolving around a guesthouse, with a recurring cast of regulars who live in the town.

Dolly has loved anthologies since he was a kid watching Amazing Stories and The Outer Limits. Dimension 404 is a six-episode anthology series set in what he calls an “antiverse,” or an alternate version of reality, “where the strange, weird and impossible not only are possible, but will happen.” An omniscient narrator will anchor each sci-fi episode.

Another factor in the rise of anthologies is that the format doesn’t require as many viewers to be a hit. “Not even that long ago, everything that got greenlit was trying to appeal to as many people as possible, so then everything became muted,” Goldthwait says. “Now there’s a desire to make things that have an original voice. If we alienate a few people, that’s fine.”

And even if a particular episode doesn’t strike a chord, there’s always the next one, which will be wholly different. A quick bite, as opposed to an all-night binge. After all, as Roush says, “Who doesn’t want to snack when they watch TV?”