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This scenario is painfully common. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The debut season ended with such precision: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?). After the season wrapped, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints pointing toward upcoming twists.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. In episode two, your favorite cast member has done something that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Curse of Overextension

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Look at Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody featuring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The first season boasted an inventive concept, with ten flawless installments. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Skilled performers (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. There were multiple award nominations, creators confidently planned five seasons to develop the plot thoroughly. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. I felt grateful as a viewer.

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

Story decisions have weakened the core. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and watching how they deal with their horrific new secrets, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. That included the show’s tiring habit of bringing in and focusing on new characters (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It's aggravating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

A Growing Trend

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Series like Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Supreme Instance

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, living rent-free in our imaginations, cliffhangers and all. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. My So-Called Life, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, ran for just one year but was cinematic in its scope: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the scripts transcended typical youth dialogue. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I mourned its end and drafted follow-up stories to answer some of those questions. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Sacred Bond

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• The author covers entertainment and style.