Audiences are not as willing as they once were to sit through a three-hour film or a 23-episode season. Some stories, however, require a run-time that's longer than a movie, but shorter than a continuing series. This can be due to many things, from the content itself to the storytelling style of the filmmakers. Studios looking to avoid a larger-than-life screen time that risks annoying the movie-going audience, while of course still making a buck, have begun producing something that lies in between, leading to the cultural phenomenon known colloquially as the limited series. Limited series go by many other names, from miniseries to anthologies, to serial dramas.