Before the movie, we talked about how much more fun the Harry Potter franchise would be as a TV show, because that means that each season could be dedicated to a book and use anywhere from 12 hours to 17 hours to tell the story of each book. And some subplots could get their own episodes, like the various love affairs. This would have the benefit of resolving that storyline while isolating it from the darker happenings, and avoiding groaningly awful situations On a TV show, you can have entire episodes that only minimally advance the main plot, but fill in the necessary color and resolve subplots. There's so many things that are half-explored that could, on a TV show, get an entire episode or two all to themselves.

Also noted is the following observation: Movies, even those that run nearly 3 hours long, are more like short stories than novels, and TV shows, with the space for digression and intricate plots twists, are more like novels. But in a perverse irony, movies and TV shows have the reverse prestige of short stories and novels, and so the temptation is to take higher prestige novels and turn them into movies. I have no doubt that this was the logic of turning "Harry Potter" into movies instead of TV shows. TV seemed too cheap for the series, especially back when they were first selling the story to Hollywood. But in the years since, prestige TV projects like "The Wire" and yes, even "Lost" have changed the equation considerably. A lot of TV shows are hands-down better than a lot of movies now, especially since the taboo against having intricate plot lines that make it hard to enter the story halfway in have been lifted. Though you probably wouldn't have that problem with "Harry Potter", which makes it even more appealing as a TV series. Viewers could enter at any time they'd like, and grasp the basic idea that Voldemort was bad and he's coming back, which would be enough of a hook to get them to stay and piece together the rest.