10 Experimental TV Episodes You NEED To See

There are many great examples of TV shows executing single-take scenes (or "oners") to bewildering effect, of using unbroken shots to more deeply immerse the audience in what's unfolding on-screen.

The seventh episode of The Bear famously had 18 of its 20 minutes unfold as a oner, yet surely the most jaw-droppingly impressive rendition of this concept to date can be seen in Mike Flanagan's excellent horror-drama series The Haunting of Hill House.

The season's sixth episode, "Two Storms," saw its near hour-long runtime unfold over the course of just five lengthy single takes, with two of them alone clocking in at roughly 20 minutes each.

It's all the more stunning as the episode alternates between the past and present in two different locations - Hill House and a funeral parlour - with mesmerisingly seamless transitions between both casts and sets.

This was achieved by Flanagan having the two sets built next to each other, allowing both the casts and camera to slyly move between the sets without the camera needing to cut.

Production of the episode was hugely complicated, with camera movements, cast blocking, and lighting extensively rehearsed to accommodate the most mundane details, while sets also had to include hiding places for the cast and crew to avoid being captured on film during transitions.

But Two Storms wasn't merely a case of an auteur filmmaker showing off - all of the technical ingenuity was in the service of creating a dreamlike tableau that so expertly brought the past and present colliding together. Masterful stuff.