Micro-Series: A Manifesto
Because Someone Had to Name This Thing
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Say No to the Gatekeepers
I talk a lot about bypassing gatekeepers on this Substack. Like a lot. While I’m no expert on social media / UGC platforms, I’ll often cite these as great mechanisms to supersede the gatekeeping model.
While choosing the right distribution platform is important (and a topic for another day), choosing the right format is probably more important, as I discuss on my merciless, bloody takedown of Aaron Sorkin.
Today, I’m going to discuss a format so nascent that it hasn’t yet been fully defined.
I call this format the “Micro-Series.”
In this episode:
🎬 The rise of the Micro-Series: A new entertainment format that's barely been named
⏱️ Why 60-120 second episodes might be the (or at least a) future of storytelling
🧪 How micro-series serve as the perfect testing ground for creators
💰 The efficiency gains from amortizing your resources across multiple episodes
📱 Why this format could bridge social media scrolling and narrative TV
🍆 DILFS!
Micro-Series: A New Construct
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Micro-dramas are a thing and have been for a while. They started in earnest in China and they’re now gaining rapid traction among U.S. audiences (and, per this week’s fabulous post by
and , LA-based film production workers).That said, at the time of this writing, the phrase “micro-series” is not yet in widespread usage. When searching “micro-series” on Google, the first results appear to be for fishing poles.
Scroll a little further down the page and you’re brought to a Wikipedia article describing short-form TV programming from 2006. Searching micro-series on Substack yields a number of articles on vertical micro-dramas (as in Elaine and Natalie’s story), which I would categorize as falling under the umbrella of micro-series.
So - as far as I can tell - this is the first publication to describe the micro-series as a construct, but if I put on my delusions of grandeur hat, I doubt it will be the last. Give me a moment to pat myself on the back.
So let’s define exactly what it is.
What is a Micro-Series?
A micro-series is kind of what it sounds like: A piece of entertainment that follows a narrative storyline, a cast of consistent characters or a single setting over the course of multiple (very) short episodes.
The defining characteristics:
Micro-series are micro: Each episode1 of a micro-series is very short; typically in the 1-2 minute range. This makes each piece of the story snackable in Quick Bites, or “Quibis” for short.*
They are series: This can mean they are serialized: The story follows a story arc that unfolds over the course of multiple episodes. But they can also be episodic: While the characters and/or setting are the same, every episode is its own self-contained story (think traditional sitcoms). Either way, there exists a sense of continuity in terms of tone, theme, story or character.
They are narrative and fictional: There already exist short-form series that cater to the world of nonfiction / commentary / news space. “mini-docs,” “mini-exposés” and “narrative threads” like
(comedic news analysis) and (internet culture reporting) fall outside the scope of micro-series as defined by me, Jon Stahl.They are (usually) vertical. Micro-dramas are the prevailing form of micro-series entertainment at the moment, and they are predominantly distributed as vertical videos on platforms like Reelshort and My Drama, and to a lesser extent, more general purpose platforms like TikTok.
*Real Talk: Learning from Quibi’s Expensive Lesson
I had a call with a screenwriter buddy of mine, and he told me a quote that struck me:
“Pioneers get the arrows. Settlers get the land.”
–Unknown
This is an uncomfortably colonialist way of saying that sometimes, being too early is just as bad as being too late.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman spent $1.75 billion proving that short-form premium content was "too early" for the market.
Maybe Quibi suffered the arrows so today's micro-series creators could get the land, but this time with sustainable budgets and organic audience demand driving the format instead of arbitrary executive mandates.
And with perfect timing, I just saw
’s latest post which hints at the same.
How Does a Micro-Series Differ from a Micro-Drama?
Micro-dramas can be defined as a form of micro-series that features affordably-produced, melodramatic stories and have titles like “The Alpha King and his Virgin Bride,” “My Stepbrother’s Dirty Secret,” “Swallow Me Whole” and one just called “DILFS” (believe me, I wish I was making this shit up).
They are a child genre within the parent category of micro-series and abide by the same definitions outlined above: Fictional vertical series whose stories are broken up into very short chunks.
Of course, cheaply-produced, easily-consumed melodrama existed well before micro-series. From the early days of television, daytime soap operas soaked the airwaves with tales of unfulfilled sexual longing, infidelity, inter-class conflict, paternity quagmires and mistaken identity.
Micro-dramas seem to appeal to a similar audience who look for simple stories, a dash of wish fulfillment and lots of para-incestual sex stuff.
Of note: A micro-drama is a form of micro-series but a micro-series extends to other genres like comedy and horror.
Are There Comedy Micro-Series?
Yes!
Although many of the episodes run a bit longer than 60-120 seconds, I would say Bistro Huddy is the number one standout micro-series in the comedy genre at the moment, with creator/actor/writer Drew Talbert at the helm.
Drew’s is the most popular one, but comedic micro-series haven’t gained a fraction of the popularity of micro-dramas, so they’re much harder to find.
Of course, there are plenty of examples of recurring characters in short-form social sketch comedy, but I would argue they lack the narrative structure of a true micro-series.
When Other Micro-Series Genres Will Emerge
I’ve spoken before about how as a medium matures, so does the depth of its storytelling.
Melodramatic Soap Operas got their start in the earliest days of both radio and television, which makes sense, because they are comprised of simple stories with un-complex characters and are much easier to produce (and sell) than high-concept dramas with deep character complexity and sweeping stories.
It follows that early micro-dramas would gain traction much the same way, and below is a breakdown on when I anticipate each micro-series genre will start rolling out.
Comedy (6-18 months)
Good comedy that tells compelling stories is incredibly difficult. Most creators will start with drama because it's more forgiving for beginners. I expect micro-comedies to be late-comers to the party, arriving in earnest within 6-18 months.
I realize saying “Drama is Easy, Comedy is Hard” may make some of you want to fight me. Please feel free to do so in the comments:
Horror (3-9 months)
Surprised this hasn't happened yet, but expect horror creators to realize they can build audiences through micro-series before spending the time and money to make full-fledged features.
I anticipate we’re going to start seeing micro-horrors pop up pretty soon, in the next 3-9 months.
Fantasy (0-6 months)
Considering the number of supernatural, super-sexual micro-series on Reelshort (e.g. Reelshort’s True Luna, about a shape-shifting she-wolf or some shit), this is already here, but will begin expanding as interest grows in the genre.
Fantasy content is here, with more variety / options expected in 0-6 months.
Thriller (0-3 months)
If you’ve watched popular lifetime movies like Obsessed with the Babysitter (which incidentally stars my friend and startup co-founder Simon Haycock), you’ll know thriller and melodrama often go hand-in-hand, and this genre already exists on platforms like Reelshort with I Am Bloody Mary and the soon-to-arrive The Adjuster (as outlined by Elaine and Natalie).
While some thriller-slash-melodramas are already here, more “true thriller” content is likely to come in 3-ish months.
Other Genres ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
As I’ve said in the past, the “early days” of any form or format is filled with low-quality, low-effort, low-variety stuff. This is just a function of how many people are operating in the space and consuming the content.
As the form / format grows in popularity and market size, the number of builders in that space grows and the variety commensurately grows with it.
To pull an example from another industry, the first mass-market automobile was the Ford Model T, which famously came in “any color you wanted, as long as that color was black.” (1909, Henry Ford).
Now there are an enormous variety of cars / colors of cars.
Does This Need to Exist?
I get it. We’re already in an age of fragmented attention and bite-sized content. Why do we need a mechanism to smash our attention into even tinier bits?
Well, I see a number of benefits for both the creator of this content and the audience watching it.
The Benefit for Creators
As a Testing Ground
I’ve discussed the benefits of producing something called a “minimum viable creation” or “MVC” (which I’m amending to be called “minimum viable concept,” just because it has a better ring to it and maybe covers a bit broader of a scope).
The basics of the MVC:
Create: Make something quickly with the resources you have on hand.
Test: Put that thing in front of some sort of an audience - either people you know or strangers on social media / YouTube.
Learn: Gather insights from your tests. These insights can take the form of hard viewership data or general sentiment around the finished product or the process of making it.
Iterate: Take these insights into the ideation phase of the next project you create, whether that thing is related to the previous project or not.
It takes the form of a cycle that looks like this:
By starting with small, semi-contained episodes, you can get through one rotation of this loop faster, and get through multiple rotations of this loop in the same time that it would take to shoot a single traditionally-produced short film. This allows you to rapidly gain lessons about both process (how to better make a thing) and product (how to make a better thing).
Amortization
With finite resources (time, money, social capital), shooting multiple episodes in one day is dramatically more efficient than separate shoots:
One location rental instead of four
One crew call instead of coordinating four schedules
One favor from friends instead of asking them to help four different weekends
This efficiency matters most for narrative stories requiring multiple people. Solo creators posting daily won't see the same compound benefits.
Practice with Story and Character
By forcing them to break the story into 1-2 minute chunks and make each of those chunks interesting in its own right, the micro-series model pushes creators to think in terms of the fundamentals:
Ideally, only the most interesting story beats, the most compelling characters and the funniest jokes will make the cut.
A novice screenwriter or director may unintentionally allow into their script or scene moments where nothing really happens. When you only have 60 seconds per episode, you have no choice but to cut to the chase. This means “entering the scene late and leaving it early,” which is as good a lesson in visual storytelling as I’ve ever heard.
Practice with Format
Writing a TV pilot is decent practice for telling televised stories, but because 99.99% of the time your pilot will not get shot (sorry to break it to you), the act of pilot writing only gives you exposure to a fraction of the process of writing TV.
Because - and this is important - your un-produced pilot is not TV. It is a script.
Anyone who has worked in TV can tell you: Once the rubber meets the road and you’re on set, on the day, the script has a tendency to go out the window. Some beats don’t work. Some jokes don’t land. Some dialogue that felt right on the page feels unnatural and stilted. And some of the most magical moments are discovered when you’re blocking a scene or rehearsing with actors. This magic almost always takes precedence over the words on the page.
Micro-series are meant to be a condensed version of serialized or episodic TV, which obviously gives you practice in telling stories across some length of story time. But more importantly, the process of producing these micro-series gives you practice in adaptation.
That is to say: You get exposure to finding those magical moments that transcend the written material. You get exposure to hearing the words and action you’ve written acted out by performers. You get exposure to the heartbreak of a joke or beat collapsing on the floor with a cold “Thud.”
And you gain a small taste of what it’s like to work in TV. Do this enough times and - no matter how resistant you are to growth - you’ll become an expert.
LoFi Lessons
But this is more than just bluster.
As with many things on this Substack, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and spending the time (and some money) producing micro-series of my own through my comedy content creation studio LoFi Comedy Collective.
And somehow, I've managed to convince other creative talent to join me, via various methods *cough coercion and blackmail cough*.
It's no coincidence that I'm timing this post to loosely coincide with the upcoming launch of my first comedy micro-series (more details to come), the first episodes of which were shot this past Sunday (6/8/25).
If you want to be part of this movement, I’d love to blackmail and coerce you too:
Drawbacks
That isn’t to say the micro-series model isn’t without its downsides. Below are a few:
Making Oopsies
If I’m done shooting Day 1 of a TV show and the dailies look like crap or the sound guy didn’t mic the talent properly, I can make the changes necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen on Day 2. If I’m shooting an entire feature over 5 days, that’s 20% of the finished product that’s going to look like crap.
Obviously, this is more or less an equivalent problem. In fact, I’ve likely spent far more on the first day of shooting a TV show than 20% of my micro-series.
Creative Constraints
Writing / directing episodes that have to fall into some arbitrary time box can sometimes feel like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Sometimes beats need more time to breathe and 1-minute isn’t long enough for an emotional moment to cure, or for suspense to build before it has to cut to the next episode.
This is obviously a problem if you’re forced to write / direct to tight time constraints (as I’m sure is the case with Reelshort since they operate on a pay-by-episode model).
However, if you aren’t forced into these constraints by a distribution platform and you’re releasing material independently (of which I am obviously an advocate), you can bypass this issue by enforcing less strict time constraints.
This gives you creative flexibility, and it’s also just way less stressful.
Other Drawbacks:
Attention Fragmentation: If you release on social platforms or YouTube, audiences may miss episodes that contain vital plot points. As platforms become more aware of micro-series, they may adjust their interfaces to accommodate this narrative format the same way that streaming platforms let you pick up where you left off in a series.
Platform Dependency: If TikTok changes its algorithm or YouTube Shorts finds you in violation of some obscure community guideline, you could lose your audience overnight. It’s for this reason that I’ve diversified LoFi’s content across multiple platform (the other reason is that it allows us to test what type of material works best on which platform).
Burnout: Frequent posting schedules require constant churn / output, which can lead to both creative and physical burnout, as is evidenced by recent waves of YouTubers quitting the platform, including a post from
on Marc Maron ending his podcast. That said, I see this being not so different from current TV / film production workflow models that utilize the aforementioned 10-12 hour workdays. It’s a different kind of grind.
Micro-Series: A Bridge to the Future?
Make no mistake: Many creatives across traditional media disciplines dread the future laid out here. A world where attention is hyper-fragmented and cinema is reduced to its most base components and delivered on a screen the size of your wallet.
But I think there’s a lot more to it than that.
First off, I don’t think there will ever only be one form or format to choose from. Micro-series can coexist with traditional TV and features.
Second, I see the proliferation of micro-series as a bridge: From the quick, fractured, non-narrative dopamine hits of social media to a more robust and continuous storytelling experience, even if it is one broken into smaller pieces.
In their ideal form, micro-series serve as a gateway drug from social media doomscrolling to watching narrative stories on TV.
Consumers will engage with increasingly higher-quality, deeper stories.
Meanwhile, creators will be able to use their work on micro-dramas to leverage into careers in longer-form entertainment, either on TV or fully-digital platforms.
That’s where I’m at right now.
What Micro-Series Mean to Me
I love TV comedy. It shaped my youth and quoting shows like The Simpsons became a way to identify other members of my tribe.
It’s a tribe that transcends race, politics, age, gender, and are united by a shared love of laughter and absurdity.
I believe producing micro-series is a powerful way to build another tribe: A tribe of misfits and weirdos who come together to tell the funny stories that we want to watch.
I see an enormous appetite among audiences for more scripted comedy (which I outline in Comedy in Crisis), and I believe micro-series are the perfect sandbox for people in the nebulous middle ground where I find myself:
Experienced enough with TV writing that I know how to tell a good story, but not experienced enough to leverage those skills to get work in the extremely competitive world of traditional entertainment.
In general, I ask you to consider micro-series as a very real way to break into long-form storytelling, not through the crowded front door, but the lesser-known back window.
We may have to get a little dirty, and it won’t be easy, but it will probably be worth it (and it will definitely be fun).
The continued growth and success of the micro-series as a format is far from certain, but I'm betting on its future because it solves real problems for both creators and audiences. Like film overtaking stage and TV overtaking film, every medium eventually finds its footing and allows space for quality stories to be told.
Who knows? Maybe today's 'DILFS' will be tomorrow's prestige entertainment.
And while the name “Micro-Drama” may suggest something small, the current pull and growth trajectory of micro-series indicates something very different.
The question isn't whether micro-series will mature (they will), it's whether you'll be early enough to the theatre to get the good seats.
Until then…
Stay tuned,
Jon
Things I’m Reading Right Now
Two posts on giving and getting notes… Very different angles but both super useful.
outlines best practices when giving notes to screenwriters: outlines how to self-evaluate and how to receive notes:
Fellow Filmstackers
and just last week launched , which you can learn more about in their first post. I’m super excited to see where this goes and you should be too!
You made it! See you next time.
For lack of a better term, I use the phrase “episode” to describe each 60 to 120-second clip in a micro-series. “Scene” isn’t quite right because - while an episode and a scene can be one and the same - oftentimes an actual scene will run across multiple episodes.
A few months ago... I said vertical series are the future. And they are going to adapt to have more stories and genres that just dramas. I do hope that some of the allegations around how they might be using this to train AI systems to spit out their own isn't true (hence non-union) but finally seeing two platforms come to the table with UBCP ACTRA for following guidelines gives me hope. The unions really missed the ball on this not being able to adapt quickly enough. And the CEO of Reelshorts has talked about his goal being a distribution platform for those who eventually create their own!
A: Wild timing. I was just talking my wife’s ears off about micro-dramas, sorry - micro-series, this morning.
B: If you make merch for your company or series, there needs to be a Delusions of Grandeur hat. I’ll buy ten.
C: Stoked to hear about your upcoming series. Can’t wait to watch it!