So few episodes

[Will and Grace Fanatic]

I was reading about the Americanized version of "Coupling" and they mentioned the original only had 22 episodes in 3 seasons. When 22 episodes is the average amount of episodes American sitcoms do in one season. Is there a reason British shows have so few episodes a season?

[Mickey]

British shows tend to be written by just one person, or two. Not a whole team like American sitcoms. They can't necessarily manage a whole run of 22 episodes on their own. Also a British TV channel is generally very unwilling to allocate that amount of time to a home grown show. Buying a foreign one is much cheaper!

[Tourmaline]

There are other reasons which come into play -

- UK television stations don't have the astronomic financial resources that many US stations have (remember, the BBC is funded by the licence fee, not advertisement revenue), so committing to a long run of a new show would present too big a financial risk to gamble on.