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This scenario is painfully common. Season two of your top TV show drops on your platform, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended flawlessly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. After the season wrapped, you were perusing Reddit threads with dedicated fans to uncover hidden hints pointing toward upcoming twists.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. In episode two, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Downside of Prolonged Runs

Wishing for cancellation can only be retrospective; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Take Kaos, a clever mythological satire starring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. Yet audiences can console themselves that the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The first season boasted an inventive concept, with ten flawless installments. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) depicted the survivors in dual eras. Several prize nominations followed, creators confidently planned five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of relief.

Young actors prepare for Stranger Things' next chapter.

Story decisions have weakened the core. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their coping with awful experiences, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. That included the show’s tiring habit of bringing in and focusing on new characters (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's aggravating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

An Increasing Pattern

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, 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. Looking at Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, TV creators know when to stop when the story has naturally reached an endpoint. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, return repeatedly with declining quality. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Supreme Instance

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, living rent-free in our imaginations, unresolved threads included. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. The classic teen series, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, concluded after a single run yet felt epic in scale: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Special Relationship

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.