Novelty isn't the question, quality and originality of the series is.

I'm no fan at all of television generally. But the quality of programming available since the year 2000 absolutely dwarfs virtually everything that came before. Shows such as Miami Vice, Moonlighting, and Hillside Blues were considered landmarks of their time. They're at best mediocre by current standards against The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Firefly, etc. The remake of Battlestar Gallactica towers above the original in all aspects --- production, casting, writing, effects, complexity.

There remains a great deal of dreck on television, but the best that there is exceeds virtually all that came before it.

(I'm partial to some earlier PBS and BBC programming, as possible exceptions.)

Erm, Hill Street Blues.

I think I mentioned I don't watch much television?

Because they were seen as lesser artistic outlets than cinema due to the rigidity of television schedules and advertising. These days, it's the Netflix series that gives you the most artistic freedom. You can make any number of episodes of any length to tell your story and you're free to appeal to a niche audience. Movies are forced into a relative narrow length window and business constraints force you to appeal to an international audience.

The creativity is still there. It's just in a different place.

Pervasive computational special effects became widely available around the early 90s (Silicon Graphics, Pixar, ILM); maybe writers migrated towards movies around then, because they could tell visually compelling stories.

maybe (again, maybe) the expanding availability of high bandwidth cable access has shifted attention back to homes as theaters?

Production quality and acting in most of those earlier TV mini-series were abysmal compared to recent content. Stuff that I had enjoyed years ago seems unwatchable now.

I think it was for the same reason the Naked Gun series didn't do well despite people loving the movies - producers misunderstood how audiences watched television.

Now however, people's viewing habits have changed. Are there mini-series from that era you'd recommend? I'd be curious how they hold up.

Here is a list of mini-series from before 1995, sorted by number of IMDb votes:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=tv_miniseries&...

Sorted by IMDb rating:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=tv_miniseries&...

Lonesome Dove (1989) is one of the greatest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_Dove_(miniseries)

Roots is probably the most famous of them. Winds of War, and its sequel. The Thorn Birds. Lonesome Dove.

the unknown reason was that technology gave Hollywood a big spike of spectacle that TV mini series didnt have the budget/resources to match. (green screen technology, CGI advances, 3D animation) But technology has improved so the gap is less, and the resources being allocated now matches movie production.