Has TV Surpassed Film In Creative Quality?

Hah! I actually started a thread about this in TV General & just made a similar, but smaller statement about it in that 'Oscars Irrelevancy' thread...so suffice to say...I would answer this with a resounding YES. TV has definitely become my go-to medium and I trust it to be better these days actually. Studios just ruin movies too much now, everything seems made to either break the box office or to garner awards.

Whereas on tv, story matters and character and creators are willing to go weirder, more niche, and really expand our view of what these narratives can be. Sure, they have the advantage of telling a longer story, but they've used that advantage well. I don't think it's any surprise a lot of show runners refer to their shows as, "10 hour movies," versus episodes. I also think a shift in the audience is what helped it as well. From what I observe audiences for tv are much more open minded and willing to go along with something a little more daring or a little more unconventional than they are with films. So there's this weird sort of divide in how we approach and view the two, again, in my opinion.

And I didn't even mention the change in technology, but I'm sure everyone gets that anyways.

This isn't to say there aren't amazing films, and shitty tv, but...all in all, I gravitate towards my tv for quality more these days than a theater. Creatives saw a gap in the tv landscape and they filled it with what they weren't getting or able to get in the movies.

Sorry, I'm sure this is totally a TL;DR, haha...I'm quite passionate about the subject ;P

its hard to tell since they are pretty different, where a stand alone movie tells one story a series can tell many, and also have the benefit of being able to take there time with characters and story's with added detail which you wouldn't be able to fit into a single film. I wouldn't say TV has surpass film, but I wouldn't say its much below it either, they're on pretty equal standing

Pretty Much.

Many folk have great big TV's with good sound systems at home now, and it's only the really big special effects films (action \ superhero) that may have more impact on a really big screen that make people want to pay good money to see them in a cinema.

Mind you I do think most TV drama is so drawn out, out of the " big shows"
I have only watched the Sopranos and Breaking Bad (and so far Better Call Saul) in completion. What a movie used to do in two-three hours now (or say a trilogy 9 hours) takes 10-50 hours and that's just a bit daft to me.

Pretty much agree, in general.

I do think that the caution and risk aversion exerted by movie studios has hampered their creativity a great deal. That has been evident for a long time. The growth of new production outlets for "TV" has resulted in a lot more creativity. I put TV in quotes because that term is becoming archaic with all the internet options. And then, there are entirely new venues sold directly to the public such as Louis CK's Horace and Pete - who knows how to categorize that!

Another thing that helps with the quality of "TV" programing is the move to limited series, sometimes with just a handful of episodes per season. This allows concentration on a few episodes and a lack of "filler" or formulaic episodes.

T.v. series work on a character bases that can be used for multiple plots than a film can. Additionally, t.v. series can be regulated better to know the number of viewers, who watched it and at what time, during the year. Film, one would pretty much have to go to a movie theater, buy a dvd or blue ray, and/or get it when it comes out on Netflix. Not to mention, there is huge lag time between when it leaves theaters and is actually available in stores. Also, the only way to know the number of people who see it is by the box office. Then there people who know their way around the system watching both t.v. series and movies on bootleg sites, which further causes a loss for revenue and viewer statistics. It particularly hurts movies because once you see a movie, you probably will not most likely see it again. T.v. series can have multiple episodes that may or may not be accessible all at once.

T.v. series, I have found, are harder to find on bootleg sites than movies are. T.v. movies, you can forget about it.

I dislike all of the shows you've mentioned except for The Sopranos. Still, I have to admit I've enjoyed more tv shows than movies the last 15 years or so.

It's almost like asking if a poem or short story has passed a novel in creative quality... when the formal qualities are restricted in terms of providing logical breaks for commercials, network vs. cable rules, number of episodes per season vs. a two to three hour running time, it's a bit of apples and oranges. When cable television became free of the need to censor, to lock it self within the structure of 42 minute time limit, to only make 10 episodes instead of more than twenty per year, it's only natural that it would begin to resemble film. At this point, length would naturally then give the benefit to television as you had much more time to develop characters and storylines. But this is still like comparing an amazing one night stand or date to a long term relationship. Two different things in many aspects.

I think it's mostly true, but there are some exceptions. Unfortunately there has been plenty of garbage on tv in the last decade, Duck Dynasty, Honey Boo Boo, 2 and Half Men, Jersey Shore. Channels like TLC, A&E, Discovery and History used to have very interesting shows about science and nature but now they're just trash like the shows I mentioned earlier. Recent movies haven't been too impressive, some decent ones but no classics. There are still good police, medical and legal dramas on tv but almost no good comedies, The Odd Couple was quite good but it looks likely to be cancelled.