You pull up your favorite streaming service, find a show that you’ve been meaning to watch, and intend to watch one, possibly two, episodes. Five hours later, you’re seven episodes in, and you realize that your Saturday off has not been nearly as productive as you had hoped when you woke up. Binge-worthy TV shows are a vital part of modern entertainment, especially with the rise in streaming popularity.

Some television shows seem almost designed for this kind of viewing, while others become exhausting after an episode or two. The difference isn't necessarily the quality of the writing. A slow, thoughtful series can be excellent television without being particularly easy to binge. Shows that encourage viewers to keep watching tend to have certain structural characteristics that make the transition from one episode to the next feel almost effortless. So, what makes a show bingeworthy? The answer may be more multifaceted than you think.

Each Episode Has A Reason To Keep Going

Bingeable series are built on the idea of making viewers want to see the next episode before the current one ends. This doesn’t have to involve a typical TV show cliffhanger. Instead, it can just be about a story that’s being built from one episode to the next.

The classic TV sitcom “Friends” is a great example. Very few episodes end with what viewers would typically consider a cliffhanger, but the ongoing stories involving the six main characters make viewers keep coming back for more. For example, the “will they, won’t they” between Ross and Rachel flows from the pilot episode to the series finale. These stories create a bingeable series without relying on a sudden cliffhanger at the end of one episode.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for cliffhangers. Some shows use cliffhangers constantly. Others use them sparingly because an audience can eventually become accustomed to the trick. When every episode ends with someone opening a mysterious door, the device loses some of its impact.

The Episodes Move Without Feeling Rushed

Bingeable TV shows tend to have a sense of forward motion. That doesn’t mean that every minute of every episode has to be fast-paced, but viewers need to feel like the story is always progressing. A drama may have a scene with a calm, yet intense conversation between two characters. As long as that conversation helps support the narrative, viewers can still invest in it.

This is where pacing becomes important. A series can have action-packed episodes that still feel slow if the plot isn't changing. Conversely, a relatively calm episode can feel fast when every scene introduces new information, changes a relationship, or creates another problem.

Episodes Don't Have To Feel Exactly The Same

Binge-watching a TV show becomes easier when every episode doesn’t feel exactly the same. While most shows follow some sort of formula, the best way to make a TV show binge-worthy is to offer some sort of variety. Viewers don’t want to know exactly how the story is going to flow from the opening credits.

This is one reason anthology-style episodes, bottle episodes, and unusual perspectives can work surprisingly well inside otherwise serialized shows. They give viewers a break from the main rhythm without necessarily abandoning the larger story.

The award-winning drama “911” is a good example of this process. While the show’s main story focuses on the personal and professional struggles of a group of firefighters in Los Angeles, the first few seasons of the show included episodes that provided the origin stories for the main characters. These episodes provided a break from the fast-paced action of the rest of the series while also offering a deeper reason to care about the characters.

Characters Give You A Reason To Stay

Speaking of the characters, no TV show becomes bingeable if there aren’t characters that viewers can become personally invested in. A mystery can make you watch another episode because you want an answer. A character you genuinely care about can make you watch an entire season because you want to see what happens to them.

This becomes especially important in longer TV series. In fact, the longer a series runs, the more important it becomes to have multiple characters that viewers can become invested in.

One of the most interesting things about binge-watching TV shows is that there isn’t a set formula for making a show bingeable. The story has momentum. The characters have somewhere to go. Questions remain unanswered, but enough has happened to make you want to see what comes next. Before long, that one episode has become three, then five, and somehow you're staring at the streaming service's “Are you still watching?” message, wondering where the evening went.

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