What’s a Companion Web Series?

TV Networks went gaga for the web in 2009, as they realized that big chunks of their audiences were getting hip to watching shows online. To feed this demand, they rolled out web spinoffs, or companion web series, for dozens of popular TV shows like The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Weeds, and Heroes.

Last year’s Streamys, which honored the best web series of 2008, had a handful of these TV companion web series in the mix. The most notable of course was SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy which took home the Streamy for Best Dramatic Web Series. And while many people loved the show, they felt that Battlestar wasn’t technically a web original since it really centered around a storyline and characters launched on traditional television. It wasn’t exactly apples to apples.

So this year we created a new category for these types of series—Best Companion Web Series.

The category is for series, often called ‘webisodes’, that are released online and directly derived from characters or plotlines that were launched in another medium, like film or television. This allows for a better comparison for the best of this breed of web series. Companion web series are not eligible for the other overall web series categories, but are still eligible for the technical award categories.

Here’s a sampling of some of the companion series put out in 2009 with their TV counterparts: