Gary Oldman Doesn’t Like Waiting Years Between Seasons of Shows Either

I’m about halfway through the most recent (and final) season of Hacks. If your first thought is, “But Andrew, that ended back in May.” You are correct! But with two kids, several jobs, and attempts at a career, I’m just tired, y’all. I love to watch things, but I often have to plan that out in advance, and even then, it’s really hit or miss. I’m keeping up with Lanterns right now out of sheer willpower, but that usually isn’t easy. And if something comes out and then disappears for several years, it’s even harder.

For example, I was really enjoying Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It was a little silly at times, and the timeline was a little confusing (Anders Holm turns into John Goodman in, like, ten years?), but I liked watching it and kept up with it week to week. Then, two years and one month after the first season ended, the show returned, and I just couldn’t be bothered. I’d lost interest, and that was due in no small part to the fact that the show had just left my head.

It’s frustrating, for a lot of reasons. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Gary Oldman, who appears in Slow Horses (another show on Apple TV), was recently speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, according to Deadline, and vented his frustrations about long waits between seasons. “You invest in these people, these fictional people, and then the show ends, and you’ve got to wait two and a half years,” Oldman explained, adding how much of a “struggle and a fight” it can be to get audiences to return while maintaining quality.

And that is one of the big trade-offs. If a show is good, who cares how long you have to wait? But the quality isn’t always there with these long waits, with Slow Horses being a show that has remained good despite delays. And to be fair, if you look back at older shows that were forced into quick turnarounds for 22-episode seasons, you can see how difficult it is for shows to survive without filler episodes, or some that are just outright bad. There’s no one right way to do things, but that doesn’t make these long waits any less annoying.