The narrative flabbiness of too many streamed dramas and thrillers is a function of overly extended durations of 50 – 60 minutes per episode. Add that to too many episodes per season and you have an audience wanting to be engaged but too often left floundering and frustrated.

In contrast, streamed TV comedy has a great advantage in that its usual roughly half-an-hour format enforces a welcome sense of storytelling discipline. While comedy’s sense of economy means any good series can seem like it’s come and gone in a couple of blinks (unless you discover it late in the day and have several seasons to work through), it’s always better, as the old showbiz saying goes, to leave the viewer wanting more.

The Kominsky Method. Photo © Michael Yarish/Netflix

That principle is exemplified by The Kominsky Method, starring Michael Douglas as the eponymous Sandy Kominisky, aging owner and head teacher of an LA acting school, and his best friend and former agent, Norman (Alan Arkin). The first two seasons lasted eight episodes each and the third season, fresh to Netflix, is cut back to six.

Given Norman’s amusingly acerbic character has now been written out...