Bob S. answered • 07/15/23
Award winning film and TV Writer will guide your screenwriting
TV shows act structure depends on what exact medium or platform they are designed for. Traditionally network TV shows started out in two acts for half-hour shows and three for one-hour shows, with commercials inserted in between the acts. Over time more and more acts were added, each one shorter and shorter, to make time for more commercials and more commercial breaks. These days, viewers who subject themselves to commercial broadcast and advertising supported cable network programming need to sit through five or six acts and as many commercial breaks to get through an hour of TV. (And yet the networks wonder why not many people are watching them anymore.)
But dramatically speaking, those shows still fall into the three or four act pattern of movies. With a couple of extra act breaks thrown in toward the last part of the show. Of course, TV show acts are a lot shorter than in movies. TV show acts don't have to be more or less the same length as each other and usually aren't. They tend to get shorter as the episode goes along.
Shows on subscription streaming services and pay cable (as in HBO) don't need to worry about commercial breaks and hence are generally structured in three or four acts. Some classy TV don't believe in worrying about acts at all. But chances are, if you were to examine their scripts, you'd find they fall into three or four acts even if the writer wasn't conscious of that.
