I hate cliffhangers in TV programmes. The reason why I've thought about it now (and ok, only just got round to posting about it) is because at the SJA panel last week someone asked why each episode was split into two parts. The reason was that the people making the decision liked cliffhangers. And in some of the commentaries on the Doctor Who DVDs some of the people have said how much they prefer the old format because they had cliffhangers. I think they're crazy.

As far as I can tell, the reason for having cliffhangers is to make people watch the next episode/series. I suppose it's the same reason they put trailers for next time on the end of each episode. And trailers in general really (although, side-note, I hate that they're now called trails).

Even if that's not why what actually happens is that I get to the end of the episode and then it says "To be continued" just as it's getting exciting. At which point I go "Argh" and wonder what's going to happen next week/in a year's time. Maybe at this point I'll go on the internet and see what people think or discuss it at work on the rare occasion anyone's watching the same thing I am. That'll last about a day, maybe, and then something else will come along.

A week later it'll come up to the time of the episode and not until they remind us what happened next week will I remember that last week ended on a cliffhanger (how much I hate the Previously on... is a topic for a whole 'nother rant). If I know in advance there's a two parter then sometimes I'll save part 1 for the next week and watch them both together. Although that's also partly because either part 1's just setting up the big cliffhanger and isn't that great (like the end of the last Doctor Who series) or part 2 doesn't live up to the cliffhanger.

When it's an end of series cliffhanger by the time a year goes by I'll have entirely forgotten there ever was a cliffhanger and what it was and why I should care about it being resolved. The minute the Previously on... comes up I remember and then I'm fine. But all the cliffhanger's done is annoyed me for a day or two for no good reason.

What's particularly annoyed me recently on the cliffhanger front is Spooks. Without giving out any spoilers at all, the last series ended about five minutes before we found out who lived and who died. If it wasn't Spooks it would have been obvious, but Spooks can be surprising like that. The first episode of the new series came along and it was pretty much revealed in the publicity (trailers and TV guide articles). So the episode started and finished up the previous series' running plotline in the first five minutes. It included a revelation, which had it been in the previous series, would have been shocking. But given that I couldn't really remember what they were talking about and didn't care anyway because it had been a year ago, it wasn't really that shocking, and so the episode lost something because of that.

Some cliffhangers are better than others. Doctor Who has a tendency to leave the Doctor and companion(s) in mortal peril, so you know they're going to get out of it. The question is how, but since that's generally solved straight away, it's not generally worth worrying about it. The first series of 24 (I didn't watch after that) had a cliffhanger at the end of every episode. Which did work, I kept watching, despite the rest of the episode not being at all interesting. I skipped the second and second-to-last episodes and didn't feel that I'd missed anything.

Not liking cliffhangers is part of the reason why I watch SJA after both parts have been broadcast. Although only part - I tried watching them separately back in the first series and then discovered that it was much better as one whole episode. It annoys me that the DVDs leave it as two - well, it's not that so much as they leave the trailer for part 2 on and the previously on part 2, which seems a bit pointless to me.

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