Actually, the "middle ground" has always existed, and it's evolving

TV series themselves are created for home screens

This premise needs a correction—traditional TV series have been tailored for television screens for decades. From camera language to narrative pacing, they differ significantly from movies: more medium and close-up shots, more dialogue-driven plots, scene transitions adapted to commercial breaks, etc. It's just that this category is so "everyday" that people overlook its screen-specific nature.

The streaming era redefines "home screen content"

The rise of platforms like Netflix and HBO has spawned a form between movies and traditional TV series—so-called "Prestige TV". These works:

• Have cinematic visual quality (widescreen, film-grade color grading)
• Have restrained season lengths (usually 6-10 episodes)
• Have high narrative density, no longer designed for commercial breaks
• Are primarily watched on TVs and computers

"Chernobyl," "True Detective," "Squid Game" are all typical works "designed for the home big screen."

China is giving birth to a new category—"Medium-length Series"

The sense of absence you mentioned is indeed more pronounced in the Chinese market. According to the latest developments, in 2025, the National Radio and Television Administration officially listed "Medium-length Series" as a separate category in filings: each episode about 15-30 minutes, total 12-24 episodes. m.163.com

Its emergence precisely fills the gap you described:

The first medium-length series to obtain a distribution license, "Window with a View," premiered in January 2026 and topped the prime-time ratings. m.163.com

Why the illusion of "no middle ground"?

Several reasons combine to create this feeling:

1. The impact of vertical short dramas is too strong—the 9:16 aspect ratio, a hook every three seconds, pushes "created for mobile" to the extreme, making the screen specificity of other forms blur in contrast. baike.baidu.com

2. Traditional TV series are "de-screenifying"—now people watch the same long series on phones, tablets, computers, and TVs. Creators no longer optimize for a single screen, diluting the awareness of "created for TV."

3. The ritual of movies is repeatedly emphasized—technologies like IMAX and Dolby Atmos constantly reinforce the narrative of "the big screen experience is irreplaceable," polarizing the discussion of screen differences.

In fact, convergence is happening

Micro-short dramas have begun to appear on TV big screens—Dragon TV launched the first national daily micro-short drama broadcast block in 2024. news.qq.com Conversely, long-series IPs are extending to horizontal short dramas. sohu.com

So rather than saying "there is no middle ground," it's more accurate to say the middle ground has always been there, just lacking a distinct name and conscious creative awareness. The formal establishment of the "Medium-length Series" concept is an attempt to turn this middle ground from "a shortened long series" or "a lengthened short drama" into a category with independent aesthetic logic—as Professor Liu Yongchang of Nanjing Normal University put it, to meet the audience's need to "binge-watch a complete story in one go," neither dragging out the runtime nor sacrificing depth. m.163.com

This is actually a very interesting observation, and you're not alone—what you describe is precisely a generational cognitive shift.

The decoupling of "TV series" and "television"

The reason you overlook it is that for your generation (or the current mainstream way of watching), the content form of "series" has become unbound from the hardware of "television."

Think about how you watch series: probably on Bilibili, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, or Netflix, using a computer, tablet, or phone. "Television" as a physical device may never have appeared in your viewing behavior. So for you, the word "TV series" has degraded into a historical naming relic, just like the action of "hanging up the phone" no longer has a physical counterpart.

Why people in the past wouldn't overlook it

For those who grew up in the television era, watching series had a strong sense of "device" and "ritual":

• You had to stick to a fixed broadcast time ("prime time at 8 PM")
• The whole family shared one TV, and what to watch required negotiation
• There were commercials, opening themes, and "to find out what happens next, tune in tomorrow"
• If you missed it, you missed it—no replay

These constraints in turn shaped the creation—why do old series often end episodes on a cliffhanger? To make you tune in on time tomorrow. Why does the pacing have fixed ups and downs? To fit commercial insertion points. These traces of "born for TV" were impossible to ignore in the viewer experience of the time, because their entire viewing process was framed by the medium of television.

Your "overlooking" actually reveals the victory of the medium

There's a classic communication theory: the more successful and mature a medium is, the more "invisible" it becomes. When technology is fully integrated into life, people only focus on the content itself, forgetting the container that carries it.

Your "not remembering that series were originally made for TV" precisely shows:

1. Television's monopoly as a content carrier has collapsed—it has gone from "the only window" to "one of many screens";
2. Content creation itself is actively de-televising—many series today are no longer optimized for TV broadcast logic, but for the streaming logic of "anytime, anywhere, any device, watch as many episodes as you want."

An interesting reverse confirmation

You can do a small experiment: watch a truly "old-school TV series" (like a Hong Kong or Japanese drama from twenty years ago), and you will immediately feel a sense of "TV-ness"—the pacing, lighting, camera work, even the actors' performance style will subconsciously make you think, "this is something from TV."

That sense of dissonance comes precisely because the modern series you usually watch have quietly washed away these "TV characteristics." So it's not that the medium of television is unimportant, but that its way of shaping content has fundamentally changed—to the point that "created for TV" has gone from a visible physical constraint to an abstract concept you need to deliberately recall.

In a sense, the root of your initial confusion about "seemingly no middle ground" lies here: when a medium becomes invisible, the content created for it also becomes "invisible."