A micro-series (or microseries) is a TV series that consists of very short episodes. There may be some room for debate as to exactly how short they have to be to qualify for this term; personally, I'd say the range can be anywhere from less than a minute to about ten minutes per episode. I don't generally consider Shows within a show (though there may be some debate over whether certain things qualify as such), or Quarter Hour Short series, or Three Shorts series to be microseries. However, I may consider some Animated Anthology series to be comprised of microseries; i.e., ongoing series of related shorts, not standalone shorts. (In some cases I may list the individual microseries here, and in others I'll include the anthology series itself. Also note that some of the microseries that I list here individually may have originated on anthology series I never saw or don't really remember, which I therefore won't list here.) I may also list some programming blocks (such as DC Nation) if they include microseries as interstitial segments within the block. (It should also be noted that many programming blocks include interstitial segments with regular hosts, which is just banter and/or silly situations, which I don't consider microseries, since they have no actual plot, or anything.) I also want to say that I usually prefer to think of a microseries as having not only very short episodes, but relatively few episodes (similar to a miniseries or limited series). But there are exceptions to this. Some microseries may have a lot of episodes, whether as part of a single season or multiple seasons.

I also believe it's important to note that while some microseries have aired on a regular schedule, it's possible that some have aired more randomly (possibly multiple times, during different commercial breaks on a particular network). Which also brings up a point I'll address at length later on this page: the fact that some microseries might actually be commercials. But first, I want to talk about webseries. While there are many webseries that follow a traditional hour or half-hour format, there are also many webseries that consist of much shorter episodes, just like microseries. (This may be especially true of webisodes that are tie-ins to TV shows, movies, etc.) However, for the most part I will not consider online series to be microseries. But there will be some exceptions to this rule. If a series of shorts are released both on TV and online around the same time, I may include them here. (If they are released on TV either first or on the same day as their web release, I'll put my review in this section, with a secondary link to the review in the appropriate webseries or webisode section. If they originate online and are subsequently released on TV anywhere from a day to roughly a month after their web release, I'll put my review in my web section, with a secondary link here. However, I don't intend to include any webseries in this section if their TV release is much more than a month after their web release. It should also be noted that I'm not always aware of when or where they originated. It's entirely possible that some things I think of exclusively as webseries may have also been released on TV around the same time, so I won't list them here even though I would if I knew they'd been on TV. Or vice versa.)

Anyway... I decided to start this subsection of TV reviews in August 2019, having considered it any number of times before. And when I first started writing this index page, I said that the concept (or at least the term) "microseries" is something I probably first became aware of in 2003, when Cartoon Network aired the anime microseries "IGPX" (in September) and the animated series "Star Wars: Clone Wars" (in November). There are a number of microseries I've seen in the years since then, but for a long time, I just wasn't sure there were enough such series to bother creating a whole section for them. But once I really started digging into the idea... checking my own website and Google, Wikipedia, whatever... I found there were more examples of the format than I realized. And I began to expand my idea of what could actually be labeled a "microseries." So I started moving various reviews (some of which are barely more than a mention that I'd seen them at some point) from other sections to this one; and some things I left where they were, but added links to them here. I also hoped to have various links I could provide to other websites that talked about microseries. So far, the only one I've found is Wikipedia, and I don't necessarily agree with everything it has to say on the subject. To wit: It says microseries are about advertising products. This may be true of some microseries, but certainly not all of them. It also says that after each air date, the episodes are available online and on mobile devices. Again, this is true of many, but not all microseries (especially not the much older series I've chosen to include in this section, some of which were produced long before the existence of the internet or mobile devices). Some of the examples Wikipedia mentions of advertising microseries are things I've never seen (and probably never heard of), but I would certainly consider them microseries, and would include them in this section if I had seen them. Another thing it mentions is "Heroes: Destiny," which I consider to be one of several series of webisodes (not microseries) based on the TV series "Heroes." (If any of those things did air on TV around the same time they were released online, I would consider them microseries as well as webisodes. But since I have no firsthand knowledge of their having aired on TV, I won't include them here. This could be a mistake on my part, about any number of things I only think of as webisodes. Or it might not.)

In any event, it's possible that Wikipedia's article about microseries got me thinking about some advertising campaigns that might be considered microseries, some of them only in retrospect (since the term didn't necessarily exist when they aired). Or I might have thought of this before I read the article, I'm not sure. But I will say that at least a couple of old series of commercials came readily to mind, and caused me to think of the concept of microseries as having existed much earlier than I had thought (although to be clear, I already realized the concept had existed before I became acquainted with it in 2003... assuming that even was the first time I had heard of the concept). One of the ad campaigns I immediately thought to consider a microseries was the Taster's Choice couple commercials of the late 80s/early 90s. There was also MCI's "Gramercy Press" commercials of 1994-95. (Googling that brought me to an article called Ads of Our Lives, from 1994, which was prompted by the MCI campaign, but also mentioned Taster's Choice as well as earlier campaigns for various products.) Of course, not every advertising campaign with multiple ads featuring a familiar spokesperson, theme, situation, slogan, or jingle could be considered a "microseries," by modern standards (or more specifically, by my standards). They have to tell an ongoing, serialized story of some sort. Target's been doing that a lot during recent Christmas seasons, such as with the Holiday Odyssey ads in 2015, the Toycracker ads in 2016, and the Together's the Joy ads in 2017. In fact, "Toycracker" tells a serial story within a serial story; the external series of ads is all leading up to a play that aired in two 4-minute segments on a single night. There were also the annual Bud Bowl ads (1989-97). And there was a series of milk ads about aliens from Brittlelactica. And all the Erin Esurance ads might just barely qualify as a series (or not). I'm sure there are any number of serialized commercials I've forgotten about, and others I was never aware of (especially outside the United States). However, I'm more familiar with the idea of such advertising microseries being released online than on TV. This includes things such as Escape My Life (Ford Escape ads), Inside Films (Intel), and any number of other webseries that aren't exactly advertising specific products or brands, but do tie into larger franchises that may sell toys, or other products (just as regular TV series, particularly cartoons, have been doing forever). DC Kids Show showcases any number of DC Comics toys and merchandise. Dragon Age: Redemption is a tie-in to the computer game "Dragon Age: Origins." Post-Apocalypto is a webseries that advertises Tenacious D's album of the same name. And... I could go on, but I won't (for now).

I should also say that not all serialized commercials are about selling things; there are also serialized PSAs or other educational types of commercials (or interstitial series that air during commercial breaks). Any for which I have review pages, I'll list in the navframe, but there are some I should probably at least mention even if they weren't important enough to me to create pages for (but which I still find memorable), such as Hinterland Who's Who, and In the News, and The More You Know, and Schoolhouse Rock! (which I don't clearly remember if I ever actually saw on TV, but someday I'd like to watch the series and make a page for it). Wikipedia lists several other interstitial series which I either never saw or have little interest in.

In any event, whether a microseries is advertising products implicitly or explicitly, or not at all, it's a format that has existed in one form or another for a very long time. And it's getting much more common nowadays, especially since you don't necessarily have to see such series on TV, when it may be more convenient to watch them online. (But that still doesn't necessarily make them webseries.) And... I guess I've pretty much run out of things to say. But I'm definitely glad I finally got around to starting this section, and that I've found more stuff to fill it with than I expected to.