Images: The highs and lows of digital drama

Quarterlife (2007)
In the fall of 2007, co-creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick unveiled Quarterlife, which they conceived as the first Web series to really capitalize on traditional narrative and filmmaking techniques. The tale of six young people living in Chicago, Quarterlife was too pensive and sleepy to appeal to mainstream audiences; Herskovitz and Zwick, who had previously created My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething, hoped to find it a home on the Web by appealing to fellow creative freethinkers.

But the timing was a little too perfect, as the Writer's Guild of America was about to go on strike, putting a damper on original television content. After decent critical acclaim, a content-hungry NBC picked up Quarterlife for prime time. It lasted a single episode; Herskovitz later admitted that a network TV station wasn't the right home for it in the first place.