“The Bear”, “Stranger Things”, “Too Much”: Honey, I’ve extended the series!

The whole question surrounding The Bear —let alone whether it's still worth watching , which is a whole other topic—has to do with its genre. Once an Emmy darling, The Bear [available in France on Disney+] was originally marketed as a comedy, even though it wasn't funny or lighthearted. Part of the misclassification was its length. Each episode was half an hour long, and sitcoms are half an hour long, and so The Bear had to be one.

But since the fourth season, The Bear has been playing overtime. Of the ten new episodes, none are less than half an hour long. True, one is 31 minutes long, while three others remain under 35. But one of them climbs to 38 minutes, two others to 40 minutes or more, and another even manages to last 1 hour and 11 minutes.

Let's not just blame The Bear, though. A host of series are taking the same path. Too Much, Lena Dunham's new series on Netflix, is just as elastic, with episodes ranging from 31 to 56 minutes. Another example is Stranger Things [also on Netflix], which went from an average of 50.6 minutes during the first season to 86.6 minutes.