5. Ready Made Seasons
Firstly, and most obviously, is the fact that the entire Potter series was, basically, ready-made from Day One. Even though the book and film series took ten years to be completed, and to align with each other, we (the fanbase) were always aware of how long it would last: 7 books and 8 films. Such foreknowledge would have created quite an unprecedented arrangement for a television series. However, one could argue that it would have been refreshing to know FOR SURE that the series was finite and that it was, ultimately, working towards a strategic conclusion. Similarly, as the Potter books grew in size, considerably so, inevitably, so would the series/seasons. So, whilst the first two/three series could have started out fairly short (perhaps 8-10 episodes) they would, more than likely need to grow to a 12-15 sized series by Book 7/Series Seven. In fact, the first three theoretical seasons, in particularly, could have quite easily followed much the same sequence that the films did, which did not omit any crucial, descriptive detail, a fate that befell the later films, unfortunately. The earlier seasons could have benefited from director additions, which were used in the later films, which would have enhanced the human, character-centric arcs, as well as the magical/mythology plot, and reduced the, sometimes criticised, younger feel of the first three films. Conversely, the later films would have an abundance of hours to fully explain the ever-complicating plot to those who (unlike me) were not hawk-eye lovers of the book series. Unfortunately, yet understandably, the films simply did not have the capacity to include the books dense subject matter and, thus, lost some golden opportunities.