The backlog of shows that are 'started but not finished' grows every time a new series lands. The problem isn't time — it's that without a structured watchlist, the series that got to episode four before a busy week interrupted it gets lost beneath the new arrivals, and the decision about what to watch next requires reconstructing the entire personal catalogue from memory.
Series Metadata as the Discovery Layer
Title, First air date, Last air date, Status, Number of seasons, Genres, Networks, Production companies, and Created by constitute the series identity and production profile. Status — ongoing versus ended — is the field that changes the watching calculus. An ongoing series with five seasons finished and a sixth in production requires a different commitment than a completed series with eight seasons fully available. Committing to a five-season prestige drama when season six's release date is unknown is a relationship with unresolved narrative tension that some viewers avoid.
Cast and Created by are the creator-identification fields that power the recommendation logic. A viewer who's consistently rated shows by a specific creator highly can filter their backlog by creator rather than by network or genre. A cast member who appeared in a show the viewer loved is a signal about a new series that no algorithm is reliably providing without having the data.
Networks with Homepage and Trailer create the access and preview layer — the fields that answer "where can I watch this" without a search and "is the tone actually what the premise suggests" without committing to episode one.
The Personal Progress Record
Watched and My rating are the two fields that separate the catalogue from the personal record. Watched tracks completion status — not started, in progress, finished, abandoned. My rating captures the evaluation after watching. Over a database of two hundred shows, the pattern across ratings reveals taste that the viewer themselves may not have consciously articulated: consistent high ratings for limited series versus low engagement with procedurals, preference for UK productions, the specific genre combinations that consistently land.
Notes and Overview handle the qualitative layer — the brief series description that reminds the viewer what the show is about when a title alone doesn't carry enough information, and the personal notes that capture what made it memorable or why it was abandoned at episode three.
Poster and Backdrops provide the visual identification that makes the database usable as a browsing experience rather than a lookup tool. A watchlist that's functionally a visual gallery of series artwork is a different interaction experience than a text list, and for series where the visual identity is part of the cultural artifact, the image fields earn their place.