 Looking at serial formats of the last decades, we can find certain recurring types of serial structures. Two very common structures in Western TV are the serial and the procedural, both weekly one hour broadcasted formats, at least in US TV. One hour in this case means that most shows last about 45 to 50 minutes without commercial breaks as compared to half-hour shows, mostly comedy formats, that usually last about 22 minutes per episode without the commercial breaks. The length of typical episodes usually stays stable in the whole series, however it can vary from one country's TV regulations to another. The serial, as a very common one-hour series type, tells an ongoing story episode by episode. Although some story arcs might only spend one single episode or maybe one season of several episodes, the major focus of the series lies on continuously developing characters, arcs and dramatic plots, and thereby keeping the audience's attention to what will happen next. This might mean that a character falls in love, marries and finally gets a divorce or dies, like maybe in Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives or Gilmore Girls, which is often called daily struggle. Depending on the setting, it could also include coronations, wars and game-changing killings, like the ones HBO's Game of Thrones or the Tudors tell of. One kind of serial that differs slightly from the daily struggle and rather feel-good formats like the WB's Gilmore Girls is the mega-movie. Winston Canby used the term mega-movie in a New York Times article in 1999 to describe HBO's then-new show, The Sopranos. As packed with characters and events of decensin dimension and color, as in Charles Dickens, their time and place observed with satiric exactitude. Each has the kind of cohesive dramatic arc that defines a work complete unto itself. This of course rings true with many of HBO's epic-scale drama series like Madman, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones or of course ABC's Lost or AMC's Breaking Bad. A second classic series type, with one-hour episodes, is the Procedural. A Procedural is in its core a series of standalone episodes that is premised on a so-called case of the week, a form of quest that has to be solved every week. These cases usually tend to be crimes to be solved, however, law cases, the investigation and cure of an illness or even the search for and defeat of a monster can also be a case to be solved. A typical procedural episode centers around a workplace environment, often high-tech labs, and might start with a murder and a murder scene to be investigated and ends with the murderer convicted and in jail. Newer series oftentimes show story arcs spanning more than one episode or season. What's most important in any case is the mystery that triggers each episode's plot. Famous procedural crime formats are for example Monk or CSI. Also, Castle, The Mentalist, House and Bones present their case of the week in nearly every episode. Each episode contains several plot or storylines or story arcs, as they are also called. One, the A plot mostly revolves around the case that has to be solved. Possible B and C plots deal with the investigator's personal life, relations to the workplace people or else. No procedural, however, can exist without a good case to be solved by the end of the episode. Let's dig a bit deeper and look at how writers create such a case or a mystery. In a film analysis in their book Film Art, Baudwell and Thompson offer the following insight. Often, a mystery in a narrative occurs when the plot withholds important events from our knowledge, delaying the information about X until Z learns of it. In their text, the writers discuss the movie The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1934. However, the exact same retardation technique, as Baudwell calls it, can be seen as a standard of nearly any mystery story, be it in a novel, a film, a series, game or else. The exposition, the events that actually form the beginning of the story, for example the events and characters involved leading to the murder, are not presented to us until much later in the plot. This forms the basic premise for nearly every single episode of a procedural like CSI and also The Mentalist. These firstly left out story parts are offered, for example, in the interview room in the end of each episode. There, the criminal recounts the exact events that led to the murder, for example, often times in a rather artificial, not at all realistic manner. Sometimes this confession is triggered by the detective, or in the Mentalist case, consultant Patrick Jains, actions and monologue about what had happened. Most famously, this quite classic monologue technique has always been used by Agatha Christie and her characters Miss Marple and Erkul Poirot. To use Baudwell's words, we would hereby find a delayed but rather concentrated exposition. The teen detective series Veronica Mas offers a similar technique for their case of the week plots. However, again adapting Baudwell's theory, the show also offers a rather continuous and delayed, not at all concentrated exposition to the main season story arcs like, for example, Veronica's investigation into her best friend Lily's murder and Veronica's search for her mother. To present the viewer with these story bits of the past, the show mostly uses regular flashbacks and Veronica's voiceovers that are often times triggered by past-themed dialogue when Veronica, for example, talks to her dad Keith Mas about earlier events. To sum up Baudwell's retardation principle, whether an exposition is designed in a continuous or concentrated way, only by delaying the revelation of some information can the plot, arouse anticipation, curiosity, suspense and surprise. So keep that in mind.