The Strand Venice Beach

http://www.strandvenice.com/

"Where Everyone is a Character"

This is an older one, but it's worth mentioning because I think it was one of the first more serious (better budget) internet serials.

Made by one of the creators of "The Blair Witch Project".

Somewhere along the way, it seems to have lost it's direction.

I never got past the pilot. First, because you had to pay for the subsequent episodes but, more importantly, because the pilot didn't grab me. Like Prom Queen, it has few characters and lots of charicatures (it even features a cameo from Kevin Smith). It's very external looking in, and you don't get a sense of any character worth rooting for.

The first episode featured a woman smashing up a porsche with a baseball bat. The idea seemed to be I would ask myself "OMG why is she doing that? I have to know what happens next." It's just not enough. We don't know anything about her yet, but it feels like you can guess what's going on... she's probably just angry at her boyfriend for cheating on her.

A hook like this has to be something we've never seen before. And hooking someone over and over again is MORE difficult than doing it on TV. That means your show has to be better than the first season of LOST (not easy).

The episodes are no longer available and the web site seems for the most part to have been abandoned, but I can gather from the reviews that the episodes have been assembled into a feature and is dong the festival circuit.

I think this is a pretty solid business plan. But they should really sell the fact that the Strand is now a feature film available for purchase on DVD (or download on Unbox?) "Now, own all the episodes for yourself."