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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The second series of your favorite TV show premieres online, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The debut season ended with such precision: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to decode subtle references illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. By the next installment, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Pitfall of Overextension

Wishing for cancellation can only be retrospective; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Look at 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 currently desire it was a one-season story. The first season boasted an inventive concept, and every episode hit the right marks. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Top-notch cast members (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. There were multiple award nominations, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to fully explore the narrative. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of relief.

Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in the forthcoming fifth season of Stranger Things.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their coping with awful experiences, the story grew padded and excessive. This involved a wearying pattern of introducing peripheral figures (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

An Increasing Pattern

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. Looking at Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Perfect Example

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, occupying our minds endlessly, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the ideal adolescent show, concluded after a single run but achieved film-like breadth: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. The ending left questions unanswered, but this reflects truth appropriately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to address unfinished business. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Sacred Bond

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• The author writes about the arts, music and fashion.