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This scenario is painfully common. The follow-up season of your beloved TV show has just begun streaming, and you're brimming with anticipation. Season one ended with such precision: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints pointing toward upcoming twists.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. By the next installment, a key performer makes a choice that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. Halfway through the season, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. By the lackluster conclusion, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Curse of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Take Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology with Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I prefer it had remained a self-contained narrative. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. There were multiple award nominations, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to develop the plot thoroughly. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.

Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in the forthcoming fifth season of Stranger Things.

Story decisions have weakened the core. In place of exploring post-rescue life, and their coping with awful experiences, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of introducing peripheral figures (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Growing Trend

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

The thing is, there are joys to be had in a limited, “one-and-done” series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Perfect Example

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, living rent-free in our imaginations, cliffhangers and all. My top series ever followed this pattern. This beloved 90s drama, the ideal adolescent show, concluded after a single run yet felt epic in scale: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but this reflects truth appropriately of adolescent uncertainties remaining perpetual. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to answer some of those questions. It might only live on an old hard drive, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Sacred Bond

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• This writer writes about the arts, music and fashion.