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Masada
1981 · TV series · 120 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Joel Oliansky
Masada is a 1981 American historical drama television miniseries aired on ABC under the tentpole ABC Novel for Television. The screenplay by Joel Oliansky is based on Ernest Gann's 1971 novel The Antagonists. A dramatization of the historical siege of the Masada citadel in Roman Palestine by legions of the Roman Empire in AD 73. A siege that ended when the Roman armies entered the fortress, only to discover the mass suicide by the Jewish defenders when defeat became imminent.
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Not not really Netflix doesn’t really do self contained seasons for the most part.
And don’t need to go all the way to Japan.
British shows used to have “series” which were self contained stories usually under 10 episodes sometimes even as little as 3 episodes in a series and series could be years apart.
However as budget grew and as British shows found audiences outside of the UK many have adopted a more seasonal approach with continuity between series and a yearly cycle.
However in general applying the anime way to shows is quite difficult because of the huge budget many shows require especially Scifi/Fantasy and historical dramas and a lot of that initial budget goes into setting up the production.
So you almost always need a multi seasonal plan to get those greenlit. Granted with CGI there is much less upfront sunken cost these days and much more of the cost goes into post production for each season but there is still enough when you need to build whole sets and costumes.
Miniseries also aren’t a solution mini series used to be pretty much made for TV movies with large budgets and often were huge events for the network.
Golden age 80’s miniseries like Winds of War, V and Masada from the 80’s had budgets on par with big movie blockbusters.
Winds of War which came out in the same year as Return of the Jedi had a budget of $40M to RoTJ $32.
By the late 80’s miniseries series like War and Remembrance were produced on a budget of over $100M, in fact War and Remembrance in 1988 had a budget larger than the 3 highest grossing films that came out that year - combined.