The newest episode of the internationally acclaimed crime drama Surelack aired last Sunday night, and was almost immediately converted by dedicated fans into a roughly 90-minute long sequence of GIFs, distributed online mostly through the personal blogging platform jumblr.
The show’s producers, Stevie Boffut and Mike Gaffit, have now announced intentions to film and air the next series as pre-made GIFs to most directly serve the interests of their watchers.
When first aired three years ago, the series spurred the creation of a disproportionately large fan community on jumblr. Its members have remained loyal despite an overall decline in plot and/or character development as the new series progresses, in favour of fan-servicing tidbits designed largely to appeal to fans’ short attention spans coupled with their appetites for ‘moments’ between the two main male characters.
Boffut and Gaffit made clarifying remarks after the announcement was posted online, saying that “to be clear, these main characters are totally straight. Like, so heterosexual! And this heterosexuality will continue in the next season as they continue to be really close but really, really straight. We’re excited. If anything, the GIFs will make it easier to see how close and how straight they are.”
The announcement of the more digestible new format has experienced a mixed reception from fans, some of whom are “thrilled” that the producers “understand what [they] really want,” and some of whom are disappointed, as “all the fun was in getting around the annoying plot to find those clips for GIFs and compilation videos.”